


perhaps i lack some foresight (should have known)

by iorion



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, No shipping, Sleepy Bois Inc Angst, Swearing, TommyInnit Whump (Video Blogging RPF), Villain Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Whump, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, Winged Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wingfic, not beta read we die like women in rocket spleef, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:42:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 33,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iorion/pseuds/iorion
Summary: Tommy changes in exile, in more ways than one.
Comments: 1089
Kudos: 3566
Collections: Best of MCYT's, Cheshire's MCYT recs!, Completed fics I read, Completed stories I've read, Cute MCYT, Found family to make me feel something, Myct wing ficssssss, Other Fanfoms





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY! So, I went on a rampage and wrote this all during some very sleepless nights. As you might have seen from the chapter count, this work is finished! I will be updating it with a new chapter each day until all 20 are published. This work is structured sort of strangely—you’ll see—so some chapters are noticeably shorter than others. I know the actual SMP storyline has moved past these events but also I’m the god of this plot so I do what I want. This takes place in a minecraft alternate universe that just barely flirts with canon and video game mechanics, so if something doesn’t make sense, pretend it was intentional. 
> 
> !! CONTENT / TRIGGER WARNINGS !! This work deals with some really intense themes including (but not limited to): violence, gore, manipulation, abuse, suicidal thoughts, and just MERCILESS self-hatred. I drew from my own experiences with many of these things while writing so if any of this sounds too intense or even a little dodgy to you, GO NO FURTHER!! I understand completely. Also, I would like to reiterate the violence/gore warning. I write me some gnarly-ass whump (by some standards). If that makes you squeamish, GO NO FURTHER!!
> 
> I wrote this about the fictional character versions of the content creators within the Dream SMP. Their characters have been slightly altered to fit my funky little sieve of a plot. This work in no way reflects my feelings about the actual content creators themselves, and if any of them expresses discomfort with it I will happily take it down.  
> All that said, let’s get this monstrous angst-fest started. Don’t worry, it does have a happy ending.

“Oh, no, I wasn’t born with my wings,” Phil explains to three sets of curious eyes, peering at him from the living room floor where they’d been play-fighting to tire themselves out before bedtime. 

“Really?” Wilbur asks, reaching a tentative hand out to pet Phil’s grey-violet flight feathers, his touch as soft as a whisper. “Then how did you get them on?”

“They didn’t attach to me, they sprouted out from my back.” 

“Ew,” says Techno. He waddles around Phil’s wings, giving them a wide berth, until he stops directly behind Phil, presumably to scrutinize the place where his feathered wings join with the smooth skin of his back. 

“Yep,” Phil says, popping the P. “It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever gone through. A bunch of my traveling buddies had to keep splashing me with numbing and instant healing throughout the whole thing, and even then I still felt like I was going to pass out or just die a few times. I do not recommend it.” 

“That’s fucked,” chirps Tommy, who has somehow adopted the vocabulary of a bitter old sailor despite the fact that he’s only four years old. Phil has long since given up on trying to train him out of it, especially considering how hypocritical it would be to let slide his own frequent (but accidental) potty mouth. 

“Am I gonna have to get wings someday?” Wilbur asks, apprehension warbling his voice. 

“No, love. Avian genetics are very,  _ very  _ rare. I’ve only ever met one other like me in my lifetime of travels. You have to have the right genes and a very specific bone structure in order to accommodate for wings, and I’m pretty sure the trait is almost completely evolved out by now,” Phil explains. Once, long ago, he’d scoured every library, census, registry—hell, even the veterinarian’s records—within a hundred miles of himself no matter where he went, desperately searching for some sign that he wasn’t alone. He always came up with very little, and was always bitterly disappointed.

But then he met Techno, Tommy, and Wilbur, and he realized that he’d been searching for family in all the wrong places. 

“Boo,” Tommy jeers. “I wanna fly, too!”

“You can!” Phil replies, a mischievous glint in his eye. Tommy barely has time to squeal before he’s being lifted in the air, Phil swinging Tommy around the room like he weighs less than a sack of carrots. 

(They checked, and Tommy weighs as much as a sack and a  _ half.  _ Big man shit.)

Phil drops a giggling Tommy onto the soft couch behind them before turning his attention to the other two, who erupt into delighted screams as they let themselves be caught and tossed through the air by their adopted father. 

Inside, the house is boisterous with laughter.

All around, the forest is still. 


	2. Chapter 2

The forest is too still. The backdrop of the empty blue sky above Logstedshire is painfully boring, and seems to suffocate any kind of excitement Tommy can think to create in his silent exile. 

Tommy glares up at the pale light poking down his tunnel, as though his gaze alone can force it to transform into the lantern-speckled sky of L’Manburg, his home.

That hurts too much to think about, though, so he sighs and goes back to hurling his pick through dirt and rock, ignoring the way his shoulders and back scream out in protest. 

He isn’t used to mining so much in such a short period of time, especially not with such shitty tools. But Dream took his fucking armor yesterday, along with all his good gear, and left him with nothing but a dirt shack and a ghost brother. 

Some vacation. 

The idea of it makes Tommy’s blood boil. How dare that green bastard exile him all the way out to this shithole? How dare he take Tommy’s armor and tools and food and force him to watch while he sets them all ablaze? How  _ dare  _ he?

_ It’s because Tubbo let him, _ a bitter, ugly voice pipes up. 

Tommy shoves it down. 

He swings at another chunk of rock, watching it tumble away into cobblestone at his feet. He lifts, arcs, swings again, the repetitive motion burning away at his shoulders and back. 

If he had some food he could stop and take a break, regenerate whatever overtired muscles are bothering him, but Dream took  _ everything.  _ Tommy probably won’t even get the chance to go to sleep once he’s done mining, because he’ll need to go kill some animals, far away. Dream spent the first few hours of Tommy’s exile clearing the plains of every living thing.

Then, if he finds any meat, he’ll have to cook it in a furnace because he doesn’t have a flint and steel yet, which will just be extra time added to his already exhausting day. All of a sudden Tommy isn’t quite so hungry anymore. 

Night is approaching fast, so his first priority has got to be armor. He won’t make it on a hunting run across the plains if he hasn’t got some sort of protection, which means he’s gonna need a fuck ton more iron. 

Lift, arc, swing. The last bit of plain stone he’d been hacking through crumbles away, to reveal…

Granite. 

Tommy resists the urge to punch it. 

Instead, he hefts his pickaxe higher in his aching arms.

Lift, arc, swing. 

One step at a time.

By the time he makes his way back up to the fresh air of the overground, Tommy’s muscles feel like they’ve been set aflame from the inside out, and his hair is chalky enough with rock dust that he sneezes every time he moves his head too sharply. 

Ghostbur is waiting a short distance away, smiling proudly at a jagged cropping of stripped logs, arranged in a circle around the beginnings of a blue mass of… something. Tommy doesn’t have the energy to whine about it, so he just dumps his ores into a pile beside the furnace in his silly little grasstop shelter and sets to work sorting out the coal from the iron so he can start the damn thing. 

“Hello Tommy! How was your mining?” Ghostbur asks in his willowy new voice, floating in lazy circles around Tommy’s head. 

Tommy stops, sighs, and counts to three in his head. 

Only then does he glance up and meet Ghostbur’s eyes with as patient a smile he can muster, and replies, “fine, I got some iron and coal. Do you need any armor?”

“No, mobs don’t bother me so much anymore. Just the rain, it makes me—”

“Melt, yes. I remember,” Tommy interrupts, shoving another pile of ore into the furnace’s open mouth so it can chew away the stone and spit out the workable iron ingots within. He’s a little too forceful with the movement and ends up catching his pinky on the hot edge of the furnace. He swears and pulls his hand back, then slams the door shut and stands up, dusting the stone and grime from his pants. 

“I made a tent for myself, though. It’s blue, so you can’t be sad when you lay in it! Would you like to try?” Ghostbur asks. His voice is like a song, now. Tommy’s heart squeezes painfully in his chest for a moment too long. Exile is making it harder to cope, apparently. 

“Maybe later,” Tommy replies. He listens to the furnace grate crackle and spark for a moment, letting the noise fill the silence of the forest around him. 

Once again, he’s struck by the knowledge that he’s completely alone. This furnace is the only man-made sound for thousands of blocks, everything else is empty and dark. Tommy’s breath comes out of his lungs far too big and far too small all at the same time. 

“Are you sure?” Ghostbur peers at him quietly, but Tommy doesn’t turn and look. He doesn’t have the emotional fortitude to stare his brother’s shadow in the face right now, not when he’ll see the same black eyes of the monster he used to love framed by translucent grey skin and an achingly innocent expression. 

“Yeah,” Tommy says. The word is rough and pained, like cobble sloughing away from smooth stone. He clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah. I need to watch the furnace, anyway. Tell me if anyone drops by.”

It’s a fragile hope, but he clings onto it like morning dew on green oak leaves, wishing for it to stay but knowing it’ll shortly evaporate. 

“Okay,” Ghostbur hums. “Have fun!”

Tommy doesn’t respond. Once he hears Ghostbur chattering happily to himself from within the walls of Logsted, he drops into his bed like a stone through water, resolving to let himself rest for just a moment while the iron cooks. 

Then he’ll remove the soft glowing metal and hammer it into the shape of a chestplate, some leggings, maybe a helmet if he has iron to spare. 

Then he’ll go into the forest and take down a few animals, just enough to restore his energy tonight. That way he can get a good night’s rest and be fully prepared to go out and stock his chests full of food in the morning. 

One step at a time.

For now, he closes his eyes.

He falls asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna be updating this around 8-9pm PST every night, I've decided!


	3. Chapter 3

Tommy wakes to the sound of birds and the smell of bacon. Perking up immediately, he tosses the covers off his legs and skips down the stairs two at a time. His small bare feet pad over the wood with hardly a sound. 

Phil stands over the stove, spatula in hand, nudging pieces of sizzling meat around between flipping the pancakes that are bubbling on a flat pan to his left. Every once in a while, he’ll let out an absentminded chirp from somewhere high in his throat. 

Phil looks up when he hears Tommy’s failed imitation, which lands somewhere between a shriek and a snort. Phil bursts into laughter, and Tommy’s cheeks go crimson with embarrassment. 

“Nice try, little bird,” Phil chuckles, ruffling Tommy’s hair once he gets close enough. Tommy huffs and tries to peer over the edge of the pan at the contents of the pancakes. Sometimes Phil will try to sneak in healthy ingredients like flax flour (and in one horrifying incident, ground carrots instead of sugar), but these look to be relatively safe. Fluffy and pale gold and mouthwatering. 

“Away from the stove, little bird,” Phil tuts and gently nudges Tommy’s hand back from where he’d reached up and attempted to touch test the consistency. 

“I’m not a little bird,” Tommy pouts. 

“Aww, but you chirped so elegantly!” Phil grins, receiving a shin full of tiny toddler-sized kicks for his trouble. 

“What was that  _ noise _ ?” Techno slurs. He’s slumped at the bottom of the staircase, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It sounded like a drowning cat.”

“Or a rat’s violent battle cry,” Wilbur grumbles, appearing by his bedroom door. 

Phil barks out a laugh that’s far too bright for the early morning hour. “That was our darling little bird, Tommy!”

“You guys are just the worst,” Tommy growls. “I was copying him.” He elbows Phil’s leg, and Wilbur bursts into laughter. 

“You can’t copy _Dad_ , he’s a real bird!” Wilbur snickers, finally trotting downstairs and fixing a careful glare at the pancakes. 

“I already checked them, they’re safe,” Tommy nods at Wilbur, who seems satisfied by the endorsement along with his own quick glance. “And I know that, I just wanted to try.”

“If anyone could get their voice to reach pitches high enough to imitate birdsong, it would be Tommy,” Techno deadpans, plopping himself down at a kitchen chair. Without looking, he sticks his hand out at the incoming angry toddler and holds him by the face before he can start kicking shit. Then, finally noticing the food on the stove, “Oh, shit, pancakes. Did anyone hide the carrots yet?”

“Honestly, you kids are too picky! The carrot sugar wasn’t  _ that  _ bad,” Phil says with an exasperated laugh, flipping a new batch of pancakes off the pan and onto the plated stack that’s already teetering dangerously tall. 

“Yes it was,” Wilbur and Techno say at the same time Tommy shrieks, “It was shit!”

Phil only shakes his head, lifting a wing to hide his grin. Those pancakes really were awful. 

“Techno, d’you want me to braid your hair?” Tommy asks suddenly, pointing at the wild pink halo of tangles surrounding his brother’s head. 

“You know how to braid?” Wilbur asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion. 

“‘Course I know how to braid, dickhead. I live with this one, after all.” Tommy points again to Techno’s hair, pulling a chair out behind him so he can stand level with Techno’s head. 

“Sure,” Techno grunts, leaning forward a little so Tommy can pull it all out from behind his back and let it dangle over the edge of the chair. 

Tommy gets to work combing through the tangles with his fingers, going slowly and gently as he’d seen Phil do a thousand times when braiding Techno’s hair back or preening his own feathers. 

Once he’s satisfied that the hair is perfectly smooth, he pulls it back from Techno’s face, starting at his temples and going down to make sure he doesn’t miss any strands. He knows Techno doesn’t like it tight against his head, so he leaves a little slack before splitting the hair into three sections and weaving them together. 

Truthfully, Tommy doesn’t exactly  _ know  _ how to braid hair. But he knows how Phil does it, and he knows that the motions look very similar to the way Phil had taught them to preen his feathers back when he’d first realized that his children were so enchanted by it. 

He’s gentle and careful, straightening out the mistakes when they appear, and keeping each strand in its place. By the time he’s finished and is reaching his hand out for a hair tie, it looks exactly like the way Phil does it. 

Well,  _ almost  _ exactly. Tommy couldn’t resist putting his own little spin on it, which in this case means that he’d miscalculated how even the three sections were supposed to be when he first split it up so he had to borrow a little hair from the larger pieces until it evened out at the bottom. 

“Done,” Tommy says proudly, hopping off the chair and sitting down in it properly just as Phil sets out their plates and starts dishing out breakfast. 

Techno takes the braid over his shoulder and inspects it, brows furrowing in surprise. 

“This is actually pretty good,” he murmurs. 

Tommy beams. 


	4. Chapter 4

Sunlight beams through Techno’s windows, reflecting off the netherite axe he’s sharpening. 

It doesn’t usually need much maintenance, but since he can’t go back to L’Manburg with its infinite XP repair rooms, he’s forced to keep a close eye on the condition of all his tools. His axe breaking would be a huge thorn in his side, especially considering how often he uses it. 

Who knew that living in the frozen tundra would require so much firewood?

Shrugging into his heavy red cloak and tightening the laces on his boots, Techno marches out into the forest beside his house, the fresh snow making a muffled crunch around each footstep. 

He swings his axe into the flesh of one of the thousands of spruce trees nearby and fells it with just a few good hits, stepping aside so it doesn’t clip him on the shoulder on the way down. That had almost happened once, instead he’d gotten a face full of snow and spruce leaves when the branch just barely missed him. He might’ve seen it coming if someone else was spotting him, but that’s not his problem.

Trees are annoying. 

Maybe he should bring back a few stacks of netherrack next time he goes mining for ancient debris. That stuff can burn forever, right? But it can also torch up your house, especially if it’s made primarily of wood. 

Techno spares a glance at his little retirement cottage, frowning. 

Even his windows are made of wood—trapdoors, because who uses glass anyways? If you want to see out the windows you need your view to be clear of any and all obstructions—glass included. Forgive him for being a little paranoid, it hasn’t exactly been Techno’s best year.

Maybe Phil could help him set up a safe netherrack fireplace. Techno will ask next time he sees him. 

If he ever comes around. 

Techno raises his axe and gets to work slicing the branches from the fallen log, leaving them there in the snow to hopefully replant themselves later. 

Once he’s fairly certain the log is free of any obstructions that will add drag when he takes it back to his house, he bends down and hefts it onto one shoulder, grunting a little under the weight. It would be easier if there was someone else carrying the other end, but since it’s just him he has to deal.

It’s fine, no problem for Technoblade. Just a little… annoying. 

As most trees are. 

Dropping the log down around the side of his house, Techno starts chopping the log into smaller chunks, then splitting those chunks into fours, until he has an appropriate stack of firewood piled by his back door. 

He takes an armful of the older, drier wood into the house with him, dumping part of it into the metal basket beside the hearth and dropping two of the fresh logs into the embers still crackling from that morning. A handful of sparks tumble up the chimney at the disturbance, and he watches them go. 

Sparks like those that swirled around his cloak, singeing the edges as he laughed, manic and bitter in the terrified face of his little brother, neither of them recognizing the other in that moment. 

Three quick knocks startle him out of his trance, and he shakes the spaced-out expression from his face before opening the door, one hand still curled protectively around the smooth handle of his axe. 

“Hey, mate,” Phil greets with a tentative smile. “Long time, no see.”

“No shit,” Techno deadpans. But then, moments later, he flashes the faintest smile of his own, standing aside to let his father in. “Come on in, make yourself at home.”

“Thanks,” Phil ducks in through the door, tucking his wings close to his body so as to not accidentally hit anything. “Sorry it’s been a while, I was caught up with some business in L’Manburg.” 

“It’s alright,” Techno shrugs, closing the door behind Phil and going back to poke at the fire. “Always something happening in L’Manburg.”

“Too right,” Phil says with a weary sigh. He drops down onto the couch in front of the fire, turning his wings outward just a bit so he doesn’t catch himself on his primaries. He fiddles with his feathers a bit, smoothing them down where they’d gotten uneven from his flight here. Something unspoken hangs in the air, and it makes Techno’s nose twitch. 

Setting the poker back where it belongs beside the hearth, Techno turns to his father, a curious eyebrow raised. 

“Do you think it would be alright for me to stick around here for a little while?” Phil blurts. “I know you’re in retirement, so you might want to be left alone for a little while but… I miss you, kiddo.”

Something unwinds in Techno’s shoulders, something tight and uncomfortable that he didn’t even really know was there until the moment it left. He looks back at the crackling fire, now a healthy blaze that gnaws steadily through the center of the logs, darkening the edges and turning them to a soft black skeleton of their former shape. 

Black skulls, spitting destruction and fire across the battlefield. Some number of blocks away, His brother begs his father to kill him, and just like that, one of them is gone. 

“That’s fine,” Techno grunts. He tries to sound nonchalant, but he knows Phil’s ever-observant eyes see right through him, into the pleased glint in his eyes and the relieved flush of his cheeks and straight through to his scarred heart. “Missed you too,” he shrugs, as if it’s not a big deal. 

It’s everything. 

Phil rises and crosses the room, wrapping his son up in a hug that’s terribly unfair—all his kids had overtaken him in height long ago, but he still has his wings over them, cradling all around and circling them in warmth. 

Surprisingly, Techno returns the embrace, taking a moment to just breathe in the warm pine and honey scent that he’d always associated with home. Phil circles his wings around them closer, until they’re closed in a protective bubble of that soft warmth. 

Techno pulls back first, looking back down to the fire and pointing at the stack of logs, still pale in the middle after being recently chopped. 

“I was thinking of going down to the nether to try and make a netherrack fireplace, so I don’t need to keep killing so many trees,” Techno explains. The silent, ‘ _ can you help? _ ’ is left unsaid, but Phil understands it all the same. 

“That sounds like a great idea, do you have any brick? That’ll keep it from endangering all this wooden architecture you’ve got here,” Phil explains. 

Phil knows how to fix everything. 

“No, but I can make some. There’s clay down by the pond.” Techno rifles through his tool chest until he finds an enchanted shovel and clips it into his belt. “D’you need any supplies? Weapons? Armor?”

“Nope, I brought most of my good gear back from my L’Manburg base. I’m ready when you are,” Phil says, pulling a netherite sword from the sheath at his hip that’s so permeated in enchantments it practically loses form as he twirls it confidently in his hands. 

“Sweet,” Techno whistles. “Let’s go, then. Portal’s this way.”

Techno watches their feet as they carve twin paths through the snow on the way to the nether portal. For some reason he’s unable to tear his eyes away. 

Two sets of footsteps, leading away from his house. 

Two sets of footsteps that will trail back to their home. 

Two voices converging over one another.

Two places for two people to sleep. 

He’s been lonely, Techno realizes. He hasn’t been bored, or restless without violence, or annoyed by the trees. 

He’s been lonely. 

“All good, mate?” Phil calls, one foot almost over the line through the portal. Techno tears his eyes away from their tracks, and behind Phil’s blonde head, the sun filters in gentle strips through each of his pale feathers. His eyes are soft—attentive, but not worried. He’s smiling at Techno like he understands, and Techno feels some of the scar tissue inside his heart beat back to life. 

Phil knows how to fix everything. 

Techno nods and steps up to the portal, giving his father a shaky smile as the violet swirls envelop them.


	5. Chapter 5

The violet swirls are hypnotizing him, the portal’s warped song is like victory bells to Tommy’s ears. 

“All done,” Dream rises from his crouch beside the portal, pocketing the flint and steel. “Ready to head out?” 

“Yes,” Tommy crows, shifting excitedly from foot to foot. He takes a step towards the portal, but Dream grabs him by the back of his chestplate, yanking him away with unnecessary force. It’s enough to have Tommy gagging and coughing from where the chestplate had dug into his windpipe, and he levels an unimpressive glare at the masked man from his place sprawled out on the ground. 

“Not so fast,” Dream tuts. He brings out a heavily enchanted shovel and, with just a slight flick of his wrist, digs a hole about as deep as Tommy is tall. “Armor,” he orders, pointing into the hole. 

“What the fuck?!” Tommy fumes. “But you already trashed my set yesterday!” 

“Sorry Tommy, that’s just the rules,” Dream quips, shrugging as though there’s nothing he can do, even though he was literally the one that made the dumb rules in the first place.

“So, what? You’re just gonna keep showing up every day and blowing up my armor and tools so I have to keep starting over?” Tommy scoffs, folding his arms. 

“Now you’re getting it,” Dream replies, condescension dripping in his tone like honey from a hive. “Can’t have you getting any fancy ideas about… oh, I don’t know… starting another revolution? Remember last time I left you unsupervised? You almost destroyed the entire SMP!”

“That wasn’t me!” Tommy protests, “I was only trying—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sick of your excuses, Tommy,” Dream snarls. “You always like to try to shift the blame away from yourself because you don’t want to admit that  _ you’re  _ the problem. You’ve always been the problem! That’s why I’m here, because I actually give a shit about you despite my better judgement. I’m trying to keep you from getting more destructive and hurting everyone around you like you  _ always do _ , but you keep resisting me!”

Tommy flinches back, his breath feels like it’s been punched out of him by a physical blow. Is that really what Dream thinks of him? 

Is that what  _ Tubbo  _ thinks of him?

No, Dream is an asshole. He’s just trying to get under Tommy’s skin, hit him where it hurts.

The question of how Dream knew what to say to get Tommy doubting himself so intensely isn’t something he’s willing to acknowledge.

Because if he thinks about it too much, he’ll start to wonder if maybe the reason it hurts so much is because it’s the truth, not some random paranoia or passing insecurity. 

Dream crouches down again, so he’s eye-level with Tommy on the ground. With one hand, he reaches out, like he might try to ruffle Tommy’s hair or something. In the other, he holds a wicked looking sword. 

“I was trying to be nice, but you’re not letting me. So how about this: just put the armor in the pit, and I won’t kill you. How’s that sound?” Dream murmurs. His voice is quietly dangerous, like the mournful purr of a ghast before it sends an earth-shattering fireball directly for your face. 

Tommy scowls, but he doesn’t think he succeeds in looking as intimidating as he’d hoped. If anything, it probably looks like  _ Dream  _ has intimidated  _ him _ , which is absolutely ridiculous, and he perishes the thought immediately. He ignores how his hands shake when they reach up to take out the loops from his chestplate buckles.

He rips the straps off his chestplate and throws it into the pit, then works on angrily undoing the clasps of his iron leggings before chucking each individual component in along with the rest, clanging unceremoniously against one another. 

He never found time to craft a helmet before Dream came over, but maybe that’s a good thing. Now he’s got some leftover ingots so the mining trip tonight won’t be as rough on his muscles. 

Fuck, he’s gonna need to go mining again. 

At this rate, he might get as buff as Techno.

(Thinking about Techno makes his stomach curl with fear at the same time his heart tightens from missing him—missing all of them—so he tries not to do it so much anymore. It’s not a very pleasant cocktail of emotions.)

Dream drops a solitary stick of dynamite into the hole, bringing out the flint and steel from earlier to help him light it. 

Tommy watches on helplessly as the product of all his hard work yesterday—along with the source of some of his renewed fire this morning—is scorched into oblivion beneath the ground. 

After the dust from the explosion settles down into the hole, Dream kicks the dirt back in and steps towards the portal, expecting Tommy to follow. 

“I hate you,” Tommy seethes. 

“You don’t hate me,” Dream chuckles. Something violent simmers under the surface of his tone, but Tommy doesn’t care.

“No, I really, really do.” Tommy’s hands clench into fists at his sides, tight enough to burn, but for some reason they don’t uncurl, only growing tighter as Dream slowly turns back to face him. 

“Do you want to go into the nether, or not?” Dream asks in that same quiet voice, like the calm before the storm. 

Tommy waits a bit before replying, as if it’ll make him feel any better for the admission. “Yes.”

“Apologize,” Dream orders. 

Tommy’s fists tighten, impossibly, and the burn in his muscles creep up his forearms and into his biceps. 

“Fine. I’m sorry,” Tommy spits. 

“Good.” Dream levels Tommy under his masked glare for just a moment longer, letting Tommy squirm beneath the scrutiny. 

Then he takes the last few steps towards the portal and steps through, and the spell is broken. 

Tommy’s fingers uncurl from his palms and he shakes them out, but they still twitch inward, searching for something to hold onto and then hold on  _ tight.  _

Afraid of what the nether might do to him now that he’s unprotected and unarmed, but also itching for some semblance of freedom, Tommy follows hot on Dream’s trail. 

If Dream takes off somewhere while they’re deep in the nether, Tommy will be Fucked, with a capital F.

The portal dumps him out on some random cropping of netherrack overlooking a massive lava lake, right on the edge of a sheer cliff. Tommy flinches back, pressing himself to the obsidian behind him, which is hot to the touch. 

“Everything okay down there?” Dream teases from above, and Tommy spares a glance away from his precariously balanced feet to search for the source of the voice. 

Dream is perched on a ledge of netherrack above him, kicking his legs lazily in the open space between him and a hundred foot drop into bubbling lava. Clearly, none of Tommy’s current fear is shared by the man, who probably has an inventory full of fire resistance potions and netherite. 

“Peachy!” Tommy snarls. It’s Dream’s fault he’s so helpless, forced to chase after Dream like a lost puppy just for the smallest chance of survival. 

Tommy’s just scrambling over one last mound of netherrack before he’ll reach some more flat, stable ground, when Dream shouts, “catch!”

Tommy only barely manages to stick an arm out, blindly blocking whatever projectile Dream had sent his way with the hand not currently balancing him against the parched rocks. Whatever it was bounces a few times on the flat land before slowing to a halt a couple paces in front of Tommy.

“That was a terrible catch,” Dream ribs. Tommy ignores him, hoisting himself the rest of the way up the rock and inspecting the projectile, wary still of the dynamite Dream undoubtedly has on hand. It would be just like Dream to drag him out to the nether just to blow him up, far away from where anyone would ever find his body. 

_ Not that anyone would care. Not even your best friend wants you around. _

Shut up, voice. 

Upon closer inspection, Tommy sees it’s a sealed container of… jerky? Why would Dream give him…?

“You looked hungry,” Dream says, as though reading his mind. 

“Oh,” is all Tommy can say in response. 

First, Dream is getting all up in his face, demanding his armor and apologies, now he’s giving Tommy food? What’s up with this guy?

“You’re  _ welcome, _ ” Dream sighs exasperatedly, jumping down from the ledge and landing beside Tommy with an agile little roll. Tommy is quick to pocket the jerky, just in case he decides to take it back.

He was really hungry.

The night before, he’d fallen asleep before he remembered to go kill a few animals, and he hadn’t eaten anything the day before because he’d been too focused on trying not to get exiled and then… getting exiled. 

“Th—thanks,” Tommy stammers, not meeting Dream’s gaze. 

“There we go!” Dream cheers, and Tommy almost feels a little proud of himself. Dream sounded proud of him, at least, which is better than nothing, he supposes. “That’s all I was looking for, just a little politeness, right Tommy? I’m only trying to help you here.”

“Alright,” Tommy nods, still on edge. Dream tilts his head expectantly, waiting for something, and Tommy blurts out a quick, “thank you.”

“Anytime,” Dream replies. Then he turns on his heel and walks jauntily through a tunnel of netherrack that opens up to a clear bridge over the lava lake. 

Tommy knows that on the other side, in the distance, just beyond his eyesight in the blistering darkness of the nether, sits the sheltered hub to the SMP—what used to be home. 

Dream won’t let him go through the portal without killing him, he knows this, but somehow the proximity to it makes Tommy feel a little bit better. Maybe one of these days he’ll work on clearing a better path from his portal to the bridge. 

Maybe someone else will visit him.

For now though, he trails after Dream’s bizarre springing steps, feeling as though he’s walking on a knife’s precarious edge. On one side, there’s the Dream that offers him food and praise and protection. On the other, that quiet storm simmers, one spark away from complete desolation. 

Tommy peers down at the vast lava lake beneath them, unable to tear his eyes away from that open void of light and violent heat. 

The lava stares back. 


	6. Chapter 6

Wilbur’s black eyes stare down at him. 

“Ugh,” Tommy groans, attempting to sit up, but a warm hand stops him before he gets too far. 

“Woah, take it easy, Toms!” Wilbur scolds. “Thank god you’re awake. Phil is on his way, so don’t worry.”

“What happened?” Tommy asks, lifting a hand to his head. It feels like it’s vibrating, carving a space straight into the dirt. 

“You fell,” Wilbur says simply, as if that sums it up for Tommy, who still doesn’t quite remember where he is. Wilbur scoots back a little in the grass, giving Tommy space to right himself while his head swims around. The light is too bright, and everything looks slow, like his vision lags behind the movement of his eyes. 

Finally sitting upright, Tommy notices they’re sprawled beneath the shade of a very tall tree. Wasn’t he just sitting up there in its branches? 

Oh, right. 

That Bitch Bird pecked the fuck out of him, and he fell, smacking his head against several branches as he tumbled from their grip, like they were a bunch of pillagers holding clubs and taking turns swinging. 

“Tommy!” Phil’s worried voice rings in his ears, and he shrinks away from it just a little, scowling. “Tommy, are you alright?”

“Fine, just—head hurts,” Tommy grouches. “Pipe down.”

Behind him, Wilbur murmurs, “that can’t be good,” and somehow it’s too loud and too quiet at the same time. His ears strain to focus on the words, but they tune in wrong and it grates against his brain. 

Phil’s signature Concerned Dad Face appears in Tommy’s vision, eyes flicking back and forth. Tommy tries to track the movement, but he gets sick, so he closes his eyes. 

“C’mon little bird,” Phil murmurs, gently gathering Tommy up in his arms and instructing Wilbur to climb onto his back. Then they take off in flight, headed towards what Tommy presumes is their house. 

He wishes he could open his eyes and look down at the treetops as they pass. He’s always loved flying with Phil, he craves the exhilarating rush of wind tangling through his hair as they soar above the world like he craves oxygen, water, adventure. It’s a necessity, but it’s not something he can grasp as his own. 

Once they land, Phil carries Tommy inside and lays him down on the couch, telling Techno to grab the first-aid kit and Wilbur, a health potion. He fluffs a pillow under Tommy’s head, then asks him to open his eyes and follow the path of his finger without using his head, whatever that means. 

Tommy complies as best he can with the weird instructions before his head starts to hurt again and he groans, closing his eyes. 

Wilbur comes back with the health potion, so Phil makes Tommy sit up a little to drink it. 

Almost immediately, his headache lessens to just a dull throb, and his eyes fly open. 

“Fuck,” Tommy gasps. “That was terrible.”

“Lie back down, we still need to bandage your forehead,” Phil scolds, and just then Techno comes back with the first-aid kit. Phil rips open a packet of sanitized gauze and holds it up to Tommy’s head, which is bleeding, apparently. Tommy hadn’t noticed. 

“This is going to sting,” Phil apologizes. “Hold my finger if you want something to grab onto.”

Techno giggles something about their dad being a bird—old joke, Tech, find some creativity—but Tommy doesn’t hear it, he’s too focused on resisting the overwhelming need to cry when Phil starts cleaning the cut over his right eye. He’s eight years old, he can handle a little sting.

Still, he reaches out and grabs onto Phil’s hand for dear life, not letting go until Phil has finished cleaning, blotting, and finally bandaging the cut with a little medical tape and gauze. It makes it a little hard for Phil to maneuver the bandage onto the right place one-handed, but Tommy refuses to let go, so Techno needs to come help lay the tape while Phil holds the gauze pad in place. 

Once he’s all bandaged up, and taken a few more swigs from the health pot, Phil finally asks what happened. 

“That Bitch Bird fucking pecked the shit out of me!” Tommy gripes. 

“A bird?” Phil clarifies, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. 

“Yeah, the baby fell out of the nest so I was just bringing it up, trying to be a nice guy, but once I got to the nest the mom went all psycho! I barely had time to put down the baby back in the nest before she fuckin’ bodyslammed me out the tree!” Tommy whines while his brothers giggle in the background. 

“He got bodyslammed by a baby bird,” Wilbur snorts. 

“It was not the baby, dickhead. Pay attention,” Tommy kicks at Wilbur’s leg, but the family had long since developed a reflex to dodge Tommy’s vicious shin kicks. 

Surprisingly, Phil is laughing. Usually he tries to discourage such behaviors before they get too far.

“Oh, little bird, don’t you know you should never disrupt fledglings when they’re sitting beneath their nests?” Phil chuckles, reaching a hand out to smooth over the now faint pink marks where the Bitch Bird had pecked Tommy. 

“What? Why not?” Tommy frowns. 

“For the exact reason you got your ass kicked today, dummy,” Techno pipes in. “The parents are usually just watching over it for a little, letting it explore the world and practice flying around. When you showed up and started climbing up to the nest, the mom probably thought you kidnapped the one on the ground and were looking for the rest to complete your set.”

“Techno’s right,” Phil explains. “When birds are fledglings, they’re usually covered in a mix of really soft new down, with a few mature feathers that can let them flap around a little. During that time, you’ll often see them puttering around on the ground, learning how to fly while their parents supervise from above. Unless they look sick or injured, it’s usually best to just leave them be.”

“Oh,” Tommy mumbles. “Well, I was just trying to help, she didn’t need to be such an ass about it, but whatever.”

Phil reaches out to ruffle Tommy’s hair, cooing at him. “Aww, it’s alright, little bird. I’m sure that fledgling was very grateful you saved it from all the hard work of flying back up to the warm nest.”

“Still can’t believe Tommy got his ass whooped by a baby bird,” Wilbur giggles. 

“I told you! It wasn’t the fledg—you were there! You literally saw it happen!” Tommy sputters angrily. 

“You’re right, I was there. And you know what I saw, Techno?” Wilbur turns to Techno with a knowing glint in his eye, and Tommy doesn’t like where this is going one bit. 

“Tommy getting absolutely destroyed by a baby bird?” Techno guesses. 

“Correct! Phil, tell him what he’s won!” Wilbur cheers over the enraged snarls that erupt from their youngest brother. 

“Techno, you win… an aggressive display of physical affection!” Phil cries, toppling all three of them onto the couch and hugging them tight (while still being cautious of Tommy’s slightly battered state). 

Techno groans as though he’s being smothered from existence, but still curls in towards the embrace just a little. Tommy will have to remember to tease him a little for that later. 

Tommy giggles into Phil’s shoulder, taking the opportunity to jab his sharp elbow into Wilbur’s ribs. Wilbur screeches and tries to tackle Tommy even though they’re still both trapped under Phil’s arms. 

Their father only holds them tighter, his wings stretched wide to cradle them on all sides. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna start updating this earlier in the day since I keep accidentally falling asleep at 6pm every night lol


	7. Chapter 7

Phil cradles Ghostbur under his wing, protecting him from the downpour of rain and sleet on the edge of the tundra forest as they trudge back towards Techno’s cottage. 

“Tommy built a tent, but it looked all wonky so I helped him straighten it out—you know, I’m very good at pitching tents now, mine is blue because it helps you not be sad if you’re sitting under it. Did you want some blue, Phil? I’ve got plenty to spare,” Ghostbur chatters on, tugging a handful of blue from his pocket and offering it to Phil, who takes it with a weary smile, not interrupting Ghostbur’s rant about Logstedshire. 

Phil is glad to hear about Tommy. Even if he can’t be there for him in person, it sounds like Ghostbur is taking good care of him while he’s exiled. 

Phil had been equal parts relieved and terrified when he’d heard. Tommy, exiled again from the nation he helped build. 

Part of Phil wants Tommy to just get out of there, from the vicious spats and quarrels that seem to haunt L’Manburg like a plague, but the other part of him worries about how that social little bird will fare out there in the world, all alone. He hopes some of his friends drop by to visit every once in a while, but he doesn’t know for sure. 

He doubts Tommy would want to see him again, not since the last time they’d interacted.

Phil remembers locking eyes with his youngest son across the battlefield, over the limp body of Wilbur, Phil’s sword driven straight through Wilbur’s chest. Tommy’s eyes welled up with horrified tears, mouth open in a silent scream— 

“Phil?” Ghostbur is tugging at his sleeve, and Phil shakes himself from the memory, glancing down at the spectre through his protective feathers. 

“Yes, Ghostbur?” Phil asks. 

“You’re squishing me,” Ghostbur giggles, and Phil notices that in his flashback, he’d unconsciously brought his wing closer around the shadow of his son, indeed squishing him a bit to Phil’s side. 

“Sorry,” Phil stretches his wing back out, giving Ghostur more room to breathe, but Ghostbur doesn’t look too bothered by it. 

“It’s okay! Anyways, as I was saying, Tommy’s tent is called tnret because I forgot how to spell tent for a second while I was making the sign, but Tommy thought it was so funny, and it was so good to see him laughing again, so I hung it up…” 

Phil had stumbled across Ghostbur just as it started to rain, a rare weather event in the tundra, and very dangerous for a ghost. He invited him over to Techno’s cottage for shelter, and Ghostbur happily accepted, instantly starting in on his ramblings. 

Phil hasn’t spoken to Ghostbur much since his appearance shortly after Wilbur’s death, too consumed by grief and guilt to interact without his throat closing up. Ghostbur seems glad that Wilbur is gone now, so he doesn’t act as though he holds any malice for Phil after what he’s done.

Phil can’t say the same for himself.

Wilbur was long gone by the time he died. 

Phil has trouble remembering that. 

What kind of a father is he? One of his sons nearly cried when Phil finally showed up for a visit, another is exiled and probably despises him, and the last is a translucent shadow that died by Phil’s blade. 

So many terrible things have happened since they were just a simple family living in a simple farm in the woods, and all of them are Phil’s fault. 

If he’d been more attentive, or more stern, or perhaps more diligent with his healthy pancake recipe experiments, maybe none of this would’ve happened. 

Or maybe it would all be the same. 

Nature vs. nurture is such a complicated conflict in Phil’s mind, it’s something that haunts him between every breath. 

Could he have stopped Wilbur from going off the deep end? Or convinced Tommy and Techno to find a compromise in their ideals? Was there ever a way for Tommy to stay in L’Manburg? Was there a better reason for Phil to leave?

The truth of the matter is that Phil can’t turn back time. He can’t un-kill Wilbur, he can’t un-spawn Techno’s withers, he can’t un-traumatize Tommy. So where does that leave him?

Overwhelmed, guilty, terrified, and longing for a safer time for him and his family.

“Is this Technoblade’s house?” Ghostbur points at the cottage just through the treeline, then quickly draws his hand back when a spare drop of rain catches on his thumb. 

“Yep,” Phil lifts a branch out of the way for Ghostbur, making sure to keep his wing secured over his head now that they’re out in the open and not partially protected by the canopy of trees. They hurry over to the front door, and immediately Phil breathes a sigh of relief at the cozy heat inside. 

The netherrack fireplace works like a charm, a small flame licking over the rocks with purpose and filling the house with gentle warmth. 

“Hello Technoblade!” Ghostbur sings, floating over to Techno’s side and peering down at the enchantment book in his hands. 

“Hello,” Techno replies. “Phil drag you out here?”

“Yes, he saw me trying to dodge the raindrops and said, ‘oh, Ghostbur! You don’t have an umbrella! Here, use my wings!’ and I said, ‘thank you Phil!’ and then we started walking over here,” Ghostbur explains. Phil wonders if Ghostbur’s inane chatter is intentional, as if he’s trying to recall each moment of every interaction so he doesn’t forget. 

“That’s nice,” Techno replies, returning his attention to the book in his lap. Ghostbur has no qualms about filling the conversation for the both of them. 

“Yeah, Phil is so nice! I was just telling him about Logstedshire, it’s Tommy’s and my new vacation home!” Ghostbur chirps. Hoping to avoid another ramble session, Phil noisily withdraws some wool and a wooden frame from a chest near the door. 

“Ghostbur, will you be needing a place to sleep tonight? We can set up a bed for you here in the living room if you’d like,” Phil offers. Maybe he can’t turn back time, but he sure as hell can offer his son a warm house and a cozy bed. He knows he’s got a lot of bad karma to work off, so he might as well start with what he can. For now, that’s a place to sleep for his dead son. 

Do ghosts even sleep? Maybe it was insensitive of him to ask— 

“No, thank you!” Ghostbur replies. “I don’t really need to sleep, not like you guys do.”

“Ah,” Phil turns and awkwardly tucks the supplies back into the chest.

“Besides, I should probably be getting back to Tommy once this rain lets up, he gets very sad if he’s left alone for too long,” Ghostbur explains, his usual singsong voice going a little dim near the end. He gives the blue still in his hands an absentminded squeeze, and the color darkens. Not by much, but it’s enough that Phil notices, and he has to take a moment to remember how to breathe again. 

“Understandable,” Techno grunts. Phil looks up, he didn’t realize Techno was paying the conversation any attention. 

Phil catches his eye, and there’s something there, in the slight downturn of Techno’s mouth, and the furrow of his brow. It’s barely noticeable, and definitely not something Phil has ever seen on his stoic son’s face before. Phil prides himself on his ability to read between the lines of his sons’ mannerisms—even Tommy, who appeared to just blurt every little thing that came to mind exactly when it did. 

This face, though, is completely foreign to him. 

Techno looks away sharply—well, that’s a strong word, he turns his eyes back down to his book and his head follows, slowly tilting down the path his eyes had taken. That’s the sharpest his movements get when he’s trying to avoid expressing his emotions. Usually, Techno will try to be the last one holding eye contact. He doesn’t like backing down from a challenge. 

“Looks cold,” Ghostbur remarks, his eyes fixed on the gap between Techno’s trapdoor windows and out into the sleet. That’s next on Phil’s list of chores for this place—building more secure windows. 

The blue in Ghostbur’s hands flickers into a deeper shade, and then, as if knocking snow from his hair, he shakes his head. When he looks back up, he’s smiling. The blue is surreptitiously tucked back into his pocket, where his hand lingers. 

“Do you like the cold, Phil? I don’t think it snows as much in Logstedshire, but this place is absolutely covered!” Ghostbur gushes. The moment is gone. 

That’s unlike Wilbur, too. The old Wilbur had been a master with his words, twisting the truth and his feelings about it around to get his gain. Nobody understood him without his permission. 

Ghostbur seems constantly on the verge of spilling all his demons out into the world, but he’ll catch himself before it gets too far, watching his blue. When it gets too dark, he shoves it away, like he’s desperate to remember but also too content to forget. 

When the old Wilbur got like this he’d turn himself bitter and mean, cracking a few jokes where he knew they’d sting, and all the attention in the room would be turned away from his own troubles in favor of whoever had just gotten hurt. He never meant it in a malicious way—not until the end—it was just a strategy he used to deflect his feelings. 

All of them grew up with one way or another to do the same. 

Phil looks at those hidden languages that once sat beneath his sons’ words and wonders when he lost his fluency. 

“I like the cold just fine, the real problem is actually the sun. My old eyes are getting too frail to handle that much reflective brightness all at once,” Phil laughs, but it’s not entirely a joke. 

“Careful, old man. Might start getting cataracts soon,” Techno teases. That indecipherable look from before is gone. 

“Piss off,” Phil grunts, swatting at Techno’s knee. “I won’t get cataracts from bright light. Just a bit of a headache.”

“Maybe you can ask Eret for some sunglasses! He’s always wearing them, I’m sure he’s got a couple extra pairs,” Ghostbur suggests. 

“I’ll think about it,” Phil chuckles. If the old Wilbur could see Ghostbur willingly suggest he go interact with that traitor king he might just perish all over again.

Ouch, bad joke. 

Sensing the dryness in Phil’s laugh, Ghostbur wordlessly pushes another handful of fresh blue into Phil’s hand. When their fingers brush, Ghostbur is ice cold. 

Phil takes it with an endeared smile at his son, who returns it in full, beaming like the first day he came back from one of those silly solo expeditions into the woods by their old home. Phil was always wary of letting them go alone, but once Tommy got old enough to at least pick a target and swing, Techno was already close to Phil’s level of combat skill and Wilbur had always been an effortless leader. 

Phil always trusted that they’d be able to find their way back before it got dark, and handle it themselves if they got into trouble. 

Well, now that Phil has sent his fledgling children off into the world on those same principles, he wants to throttle his past self for being so flippant, so blindly trusting in their abilities as adults and his own abilities as a father. 

Tommy’s barely sixteen years old, for fuck’s sake!

Phil is anxiously picking at the blue on his lap, making a terrible mess of his hands. He sighs and stands, pocketing the blue alongside the other bundles of the stuff he’s still got from previous Ghostbur run-ins. 

He stands over the sink and lets the color be washed away, the water collecting itself into a little blue puddle before it falls down the drain. 

Overhead, the rain howls. 


	8. Chapter 8

The rain is howling like a beast from hell, but Tommy can barely hear it over his delighted peals of laughter. He clings to the cool metal of the trident as tight as he can so his hands don’t shake as he tosses it up again, higher, higher, higher. 

The trident drags him through the air, drops of rain pelting against his skin like stones, and Tommy couldn’t be happier. 

He’s flying, he’s really flying again! 

The land beneath him—Logstedshire—creeps closer and closer in each lull between throws. 

No, none of that. Not right now.

Tommy rears back and tosses again, shrieking when it jolts forward with him still holding on. The novelty will never wear off, he doesn’t think so. 

Tommy, flying again! He never thought he’d see the day. 

Before he’s stopped soaring from the previous throw, Tommy lurches upwards again, then again after that, watching the treetops below turn into mere drops of green in the distance. Far away, he can see the peaks of a few snow-capped mountains. On his other side, a vast ocean melts into the horizon. 

The air is starting to get thinner and colder the higher he goes. He doesn’t look back, just pulls the trident over his head for another throw. 

The roar of the rain starts to muffle, and soon enough Tommy realizes he can’t see much at all. The world has gone eerily still. 

Large, powdery flakes of snow cling to the exposed skin on his arms and face, melting around him. He’s hit the cloud limit. 

Pulling his arms back for yet another swing, Tommy realizes with a start that the trident has gone dim, no longer glowing from its contact with the rain. 

Up in the snow, he starts to fall. 

For a second, Tommy just lets himself tumble through the empty air, gazing up at the blooming clouds as they shrink further away from him. 

Then he makes the mistake of looking down at the rapidly approaching land below, and his heart leaps in his chest like it’s been slammed by a minecart. 

Fumbling for purchase on the smooth handle of the trident, Tommy tries to throw it again, but the enchantment stutters against the open air. The wind whips through his clothes like it’s trying to rip the fabric right off his back. 

The ground gets closer and closer, the world around him turning into a tunnelled blur, and Tommy lets out a panicked gasp. The trident is still recovering in his hands, he can see the swirling enchantment slip in and out of its strength. In a last-ditch effort to save himself, Tommy closes his eyes tight and throws just as it glows back to life. 

Like a hook sinking into the mouth of a fish, the trident yanks him up, pulling at the muscles in his shoulders. Tommy opens his eyes again just as he tumbles to a stop on the grassy plains, feet connecting with the muddy earth. 

Tommy gulps in breaths of air, his vision is spinning and his hands clutch onto the trident like a lifeline. Drops of rain are falling into his eyes, so he puts his head down and focuses on the feeling of the ground beneath him. 

Solid. 

Safe. 

“You got pretty high up for a second there, Tommy,” Dream applauds, and Tommy is finally able to wrench his vision away from the grass to look the mask in its eyes. “Any higher and you might’ve hit the snow. Then you’d be fucked.”

_ Why didn’t you warn me? You knew it would stop working and you didn’t warn me? Were you trying to kill me? Should I have just let the ground swallow me up?  _

“That was so cool,” Tommy pretends the quiet in his voice is from reverence for the trident, not the fear threatening to choke him. “I was flying!”

“You sure were!” Dream laughs. “If we had wings like that Philza’s we wouldn’t even need to wait for it to rain.” 

Dream’s tone has taken on that slight darkness—barely noticeable, but Tommy’s learned to listen for it. When Dream gets like this, it usually means someone’s about to get punched. Usually, that someone is Tommy. 

But it’s been a few days since that last happened. Tommy has been giving up his armor and tools without complaint, after a few weeks of futile bargaining, he’s starting to realize that Dream has good reason. 

Wearing armor had been one of the first signs that Wilbur was changing. 

It represented mistrust.

It represented rebellion. 

Dream just doesn’t want Tommy to be stirring up trouble anymore, Tommy knows that now. After everything he’s been told—about how much brighter L’Manburg is without him, and how happy everyone is to have him gone—Tommy has accepted that he was probably the problem all along. 

Dream let him keep some of his tools today. He must’ve noticed how achy and raw all the mining was making his back. 

Dream’s observant like that. He sees the little things, no matter how much Tommy tries to hide them. 

“Yeah,” Tommy finally gets his fingers to uncurl from their panicked grip on the trident handle, and he hands it back to Dream. Maybe if Tommy just nods along with whatever Dream is talking about, he won’t get angry again. 

Dream sighs. “Such a shame he’s so well protected, though. I mean, Phil’s fighting alone is nothing to sneeze at, but teamed up with Technoblade it would be almost impossible to get them.”

“Get them?” Tommy repeats, not quite understanding. He doesn’t like talking about Phil, and he definitely doesn’t want to talk about Techno, but if it’s what Dream wants, who is Tommy to ask him to stop?

“Yeah, his wings,” Dream says. “If it was someone weaker, I’d chop them off in a heartbeat.” 

_ Chop them off.  _ Dream wants to chop off Phil’s wings—Tommy’s  _ father.  _ Dream wants to hurt his father, and steal his wings, the wings that had always held Tommy close, kept him warm, felt like home, and Dream wants—

No, he said he wouldn’t. He’s just teasing. Imagining. Tommy sometimes wonders what it would be like to have wings like Phil. All of them did at some point or another.

Although, it never crossed any of his siblings’ minds to  _ cut them off. _

“Pity it wasn’t Wilbur born with them,” Dream chuckles darkly. “I’d have stolen them ages ago.”

“Wilbur’s dead,” Tommy says. His voice is flat. He doesn’t like where this conversation has gone. He doesn’t point out that Phil wasn’t born with his wings, he had to fight to get them. He never talked about it much, but he also didn’t shy away from the subject whenever one of them asked. They sprouted from his back while his friends held him, splashing potion after potion to make sure he didn’t just die from the pain. Phil deserves his wings.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Dream laughs. 

Tommy knows how it feels when all the blood drains from his face. All he’s lived through, and he can recognize when he’s gone ashen. Tommy does that. 

His brother is dead, and Dream is laughing. Like they’re talking about a trip to the bakery, or a spilled coffee. 

Wilbur is dead, and Dream is laughing.

What is Tommy  _ doing  _ here? Dream isn’t his friend, he’s not a nice guy, he’s a monster! 

Run! Run away!

The trident is back in his face, and Tommy takes it, hesitant. 

“Think you could do a double 360 from here before you land in that pool over there?” Dream points a couple feet away, to a pond in the middle of the plains. The surface blurs under the constant disturbance of rain.

“Duh,” Tommy scoffs. He pulls back and throws the trident high, twirling around twice before he plummets safely into the deep of the pond. 

Best not try to run away now, not while it’s raining. Dream will use his trident to catch up with him in an instant, and then Tommy will be dead.

Can’t run when it’s dry, either. Dream’s probably got a couple hundred stacks of ender pearls on hand, if not on his person then definitely in an ender chest of some sort. 

Tommy probably shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff anyways. He’s never been able to hide anything from Dream, and he’d just be angry if he knew Tommy was being ungrateful. 

Besides, it’s not like he cares about Phil, Wilbur, and certainly not Techno. They abandoned him, destroyed L’Manburg, they hurt and cut and killed without a thought in Tommy’s direction. 

They don’t care about him anymore.

Maybe they never did.

Maybe they found the first opportunity to get rid of him and took it, never once looking back. 

Even Ghostbur has been spending more and more time away. Tommy can only assume he’s with Techno and Phil, for all he talks about them. Ghostbur has always been nicer than Wilbur was, at least compared to their Pogtopia days. He’s probably just trying to gradually push Tommy away, thus sparing his feelings when he inevitably leaves forever.

Fuck that. Tommy doesn’t need them, and he doesn’t need their pity. He’s got Dream, who is scary sometimes, but he’s also funny and generous and notices everything. 

“Oh, you crushed that!” Dream hoots, pumping his fist in the air. “Try to do a triple this time!”

Tommy bares his teeth in what might’ve once been a smile. He crouches, readjusting his grip on the trident, and swings. His shoulders ache from the exertion, but he ignores it.

Overhead, a rumble of thunder sings along to his laughter. 


	9. Chapter 9

Another rumble of thunder booms throughout the house, shaking the window panes. Tommy pulls back a bit, so his face isn’t squished up to the glass, and watches in awe as the darkened front yard flickers awake from lightning. 

There was barely any time between. The storm must be right on top of them!

Tommy has always loved the sky and all the things it can create, storms included. They’re just so cool! Like magic, they can summon electric power bright enough to light up the world for as far as the eye can see. 

He imagines if he could fly, he’d be darting around, holding one of those ribbons of light in his hands like a whip. They certainly crack like one, though the lag between flash and sound leaves something to be desired in terms of intimidation. Maybe he’d bring it back and show it to Phil, who would scold him for being reckless but then hang it up on the mantle anyways. 

Tommy scrambles back up to the glass, a delighted smile on his face, when a small whimper catches his attention. 

What the fuck was that?

The thunder roars again, and along with it, another terrified little whimper. It’s coming from inside, behind Tommy. The house goes white like an overexposed polaroid for half a second as lightning spears through the heavens, then goes dark again. 

He can’t see any animals that might’ve gotten in, nor is the door open. Tommy would’ve noticed, he’s been sitting on the kitchen counter with his eyes trained on the storm for the past several minutes, waiting for it to get wilder. Only now does he hear the sound. 

Tommy hops down from the counter and wanders into the living room. Maybe it’s a squeaky door swinging in the wind. Phil is up in his study, teaching some political strategies to Wilbur, who is terrifyingly fascinated with the mechanics of the various communities Phil used to encounter in his travels. Tommy thinks he would’ve heard if one of them opened a window or something, but it can’t hurt to check.

Rounding the corner to the living room, Tommy stops short. There’s a massive tower of cushions and pillows where their couch used to be. It looks like someone was trying to build a fort, but it was collapsed in by design. Nothing looks to be built with efficiency in mind, there’s no entrance or exit, just a gigantic pile. 

At the bottom, Tommy spots a flash of pink braided hair. 

“Techno?” Tommy giggles. “What’re you doing under—?”

Another flash of lightning illuminates the room, and the clamoring thunder follows only a blink later. The mass of cushions trembles a little, as if the boy underneath had flinched. 

How strange.

Tommy approaches the pile and gets down on his hands and knees, shimmying under the first cushion beside his brother as best he can. 

Once he gets in, he notices there’s a little space carved out for Techno, who sits curled in a ball, hands pressed tightly against his ears. His eyes are screwed shut, and his knees are trembling where they’re drawn up to his chest. 

“Tech?” Tommy tries again. He pokes at Techno’s leg, and it jolts back. Techno opens his eyes, and when they land on Tommy, he scowls. 

“Go away,” Techno grumbles. 

Tommy opens his mouth to tell him that his fort looks just dreadful, but just then the lightning flickers, and suddenly Techno is flinching inward, hands pressing tighter against his ears. His hair is all tangled around his fingers, as if he’d been anxiously fussing with it. 

Tommy frowns and shuffles closer. 

“Are you scared of the storm?” Tommy asks. 

“No,” Techno snaps. The roll of thunder from the last lightning strike appears, and Techno buries his face into his curled up knees. 

Wordlessly, Tommy extends his arm and wraps it around Techno’s shoulders in a sideways embrace. With his other hand, he pets down the flurry of hair around Techno’s head, smoothing it back into order. 

“It’s okay, Techie. I’ll protect you,” Tommy soothes. 

“I don’t need protection, least of all from—”

Lightning flashes again, and Techno startles, turning his head into Tommy’s arm. His breathing is shallow, and his shoulders shake. 

“One, two, three, four—” The thunder claps before Tommy can finish saying four, so he calls it three and a half. 

“What’re you doing?” Techno mutters into Tommy’s shirt. 

“I’m counting how far away the storm is,” Tommy replies. “You start counting from when the lightning starts, and stop once the thunder comes. The higher you get, the further the storm.”

“In what measurement of distance?” Techno asks, and even if Tommy can’t see his face properly, he can hear the suspicion in his voice. 

“Uh,” Tommy fumbles. “I’m not sure. But it’s true, y’know. Light is faster than sound, so that’s why.”

“Duh,” Techno grunts. “Everybody knows tha—”

The room illuminates again, and Tommy cuts Techno off. 

“One, two, three, four, five—” the thunder appears, screaming overhead. 

Techno tenses, and Tommy tightens his arm around him. 

“Must be getting farther away then,” Tommy explains. “Last time I only got to three.”

“Is it?” Techno asks. He sits up a little, scanning the view of their living room between the cracks in his haphazard pillow shelter. 

“Yeah, count the next one with me, just to be sure,” Tommy says critically, as though he’s conducting very important research. 

Techno looks like he’s going to argue for a moment, but then another bolt of lightning washes over the house. Refusing to flinch again, he starts counting right alongside Tommy. 

“One, two, three, four…”


	10. Chapter 10

“Five more and we’ll have enough for another stack,” Techno announces, plucking a crimson apple from one of the trees. 

“Do you really need that many gapples? How many do you have back home?” Phil laughs. He’s flying just overhead, scouting the area for more apple trees nearby. He’s shed his coat and tied it in a knot around his waist, but it still feels warm out in the forest so far from their snowy tundra. 

“Fifteen stacks, why?” Techno asks. Then, seeing Phil’s incredulous expression, he folds his arms. “What? There’s never a reason to  _ not  _ have fifteen—now sixteen—stacks of gapples. It’s not like they ever go bad. Why wouldn’t I want more gapples?”

Phil only sighs and runs a hand over his face, covering his exasperated smile. He spots another tree and circles toward it, pulling a few of the ripe apples from the top where only he can reach. If what Techno says is true, then it’s likely that the lower branches have already been scavenged bare for their resources. It’s a miracle the animals out here haven’t starved to death.

It’s that thought that makes Phil wonder how Tommy’s doing, which probably isn’t a good sign. He knows Tommy can take care of himself, as he’d so loudly proclaimed every time Phil fussed about his shoelaces, or his armor straps, or the way he held his sword, or a thousand other things in his childhood. 

But Tommy is still a child, and Phil’s child at that. Even when he shot up taller than Techno, or argued about his weight in sacks of carrots. 

He’s still just a kid. 

Phil knows he should probably drop by to check on him soon. It’s been just over a month in exile, and if Tommy knows what he’s doing he likely already has a solid shelter built beyond just a tent, along with a decent amount of food and probably a few pieces of diamond gear.

Phil wants to stop worrying, Tommy’s got Ghostbur to watch over him after all, but a nagging instinct keeps insisting that something is wrong. And the more time that goes by without Phil visiting, the feeling only gets worse. 

_ I’ve been busy _ , Phil tells himself. First it was teaching Techno how to build a netherrack fireplace, then it was helping him establish his turtle farm. Then Phil built a bee farm next door, and after that, he was capturing and curing zombie villagers. 

Now he’s flying over the woods helping Techno collect more apples to make into his sixteenth stack ( _ sixteen _ , Phil thinks irritably) of gapples, and he knows he’s running out of excuses. He really should just bite the bullet and go, even if it’s just to pass overhead from a distance. Tommy might not want to talk to him, and that’s fine, he doesn’t need to. Phil just wants to settle this anxious thrumming in his chest.

The idea of how Tommy would react upon seeing him is what’s holding him back, he knows this. Phil feels like a coward, shying so pitifully away from his teenage son’s wrath, but he can’t help it. 

Tommy had gone perfectly, terrifyingly still that day on the battlefield. His jumpy little bird, finally fallen cold. After the initial shock at what Phil had done, his gaze tore away from Wilbur’s corpse and bore into Phil’s eyes, pure fury lighting him up like a forest fire. Mixed in with that had been enough betrayal, anguish, and fear to make even the most hardened soldier tremble. It was something Phil never wants to see on his son’s face again. 

_ Enough with that _ , Phil chides himself. The more he thinks about visiting Tommy, the more he psychs himself out of it. After that little recollection, he’ll be needing to spend a while gathering the confidence to consider it again.

_ What chickenshit _ , Phil’s brain screams in Tommy’s voice.  _ You’re just a big floppy chicken _ .

Tommy’s always had a far sharper eye than any normal person should, though. If Phil were to try and make a quick incognito flight over Logstedshire he’d be spotted in seconds. And going in on foot to actually talk to the kid—yeah, he really is a chicken. Just imagining that conversation has Phil’s hands all clammy and his stomach churning. 

Tommy’s got Ghostbur, and he’s a tough kid. Even if he has problems at first, he’s stubborn enough to force the rest of the world around him to accommodate his needs. Phil once watched him scream at a small brush fire hard enough that it went out, the meager flame shrinking away from the furious blonde baby that was waving his fists and stamping his feet like he was the most intimidating force in the world.

Yeah, Tommy’s got it. He’s okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and thus with this short chapter, the beginning half of our story has come to a close. get ready for the REAL fun to kick in soon :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before getting into this chapter, please heed the warnings I placed at the beginning of this work. It's starting.

Tommy is not okay. 

Dream came by again today, and he was in one of his worst moods yet. 

While blowing up Tommy’s armor and tools, he also demanded all the food Tommy had been rationing at the bottom of a chest, and the blanket on Tommy’s bed. 

That done, he sneered that if Tommy really needed a blanket and food that badly, he could go kill a few sheep for both. Tommy shouted at him that there were no sheep, Dream slaughtered them all back when he first moved in, Tommy and got himself a black eye for it. After that, Dream threw his hands up and demanded that Tommy explain why he was always making Dream hurt him. 

Apparently, ‘you’re the one that woke up and chose violence, dickhead’ was the wrong answer, because now Tommy is without both a blanket  _ and  _ a bed, and he’s got bruises mottled all over his ribs to match his black eye and split lip. 

Then Dream sent him down into the mines and told him he wasn’t seeing the sun again until he brought back a stack of iron ore and a sincere apology. The entrance was blocked off by obsidian until Tommy came back, and then he had to scream and beg and plead for the better part of an hour before Dream stopped pretending not to hear him. 

Without another word, Dream yanked Tommy by the collar into the world above, dug a hole, and pointed at it. Tommy obediently dumped his stack of iron ore down, and Dream lit another fuse. He started walking back to the portal before the wick even burned halfway through. 

Pitifully, Tommy fell down at Dream’s feet and begged him not to leave. Not after all those hours spent alone in the dark mine, not as night was falling and mobs were appearing and he was completely out of supplies again. 

Dream shrugged him off and said, “you should’ve thought about that before you decided to be ungrateful again.”

Then he left while Tommy swore up and down he wasn’t ungrateful, and he wasn’t trying to be a terrible little parasite, he wasn't to stir up trouble like he always did, he took it all back—

And Dream was gone.

After that, Tommy hadn’t the energy to go into the neighboring biomes to gather enough wool for a new bed, and after hours upon hours of mining and slogging those heavy ores all the way up the mineshaft path, his back and shoulders are screaming in pain worse than the combined sum of every day previous. Not even the throbbing in his ribs and eye feel as bad as his cramping muscles do, which inspires both concern and overwhelmed dissociation. Tommy’s simply in too much pain to care.

He misses home.

Most nights, he goes to sleep imagining what he’d say to all of them if he could go back. He’d apologize to Tubbo for always being such a terrorist and a shitty friend. He’d go over every insult, every mistake, even though Dream has drilled it into his head that they were never ‘mistakes,’ they were intentional grabs for attention because he’s such a miserable little burden on every living thing. 

He’d take accountability for it all, and wouldn’t grovel for forgiveness. He’d accept every bit of abuse Tubbo wants to hurl at him for it, and afterwards he’d thank him for helping Tommy be better. Even if Tubbo was nothing but a delight every time Tommy fucked up (until the end), Dream has explained that he was just taking pity on Tommy, and that exile was just the straw that broke the sweet camel’s back. 

Tommy would imagine himself apologizing to Techno, over and over and over again. He was right, heroes don’t get happy endings, because the people who think themselves to be the heroes are almost always just antagonizing others on purpose, searching for something to ease their guilty conscience over how unbearable they are as people. 

He’d apologize to Wilbur, if he could. Wilbur reminds him a lot of Dream, the only one who had the balls to tell Tommy the truth about himself. ‘Let’s be the bad guys,’ Wilbur said. Tommy would tell him that he already was, all along. Tommy is a bad guy. 

He’s come up with about a thousand ideas for Phil, but none of them come even close to adequate penitence for his crimes. Phil gave him everything, and Tommy just took it all up. He took and took and took until there was nothing left, and then he still demanded more. Phil opened his vast and endless heart up for three unruly boys, and by some miracle Tommy was allowed to be one of them. 

An impostor living amongst angels, Tommy was. Even as a kid, he was nothing but burdensome. A stain on their perfect, beautiful, overwhelming kindness. Those people he used to call family—they’re sunshine incarnate. They aren’t perfect people, but they’re a billion times better than Tommy could ever hope to be. Tommy will never forgive himself for what he did to them, just existing in their presence. He was never worthy of that. 

Then, after stewing about it, he’ll always come back around to the realization that all of them would’ve been better off without him, and going in to try to make amends would just be stirring the pot, making trouble like he always does. He could just kill himself and get over it now—he’s looked down into the lava enough times to know that he’d have no hope of surviving. There’s even a spot he found that’s exactly far enough from the nether shore that not even a fire resistance potion would save him, it would wear off long before he managed to slog through the thick magma and escape.

But still, killing himself wouldn’t erase all the bad he did in their lives. Even if he’d sat still and silent for his entire life, never doing anything unless he was told, he still would’ve been bringing down their collective light. Just because he wouldn't act on his putrid nature wouldn’t change the fact that it exists, and he’d just be lying to them, taking advantage of them again. 

He doesn’t just wish he was dead, he wishes he was never born at all.

Somehow, he had them all fooled. He supposes he should just be grateful that something like him was allowed to coast through life like he did before, but it doesn’t feel right. Not now that he’s been exposed to the true reasons behind his every action. He just wants desperately to make it all better for them. He wants to blot himself from existence, he wants to be dead.

These are the thoughts that lull Tommy to sleep each night. 

Tonight, though, he just misses home. 

He’s in terrible, horrible pain, and he just wants to indulge a little. And that’s selfish, and repugnant, and he doesn’t deserve it, but he allows himself to be swept away by memories. 

He remembers the days before he was exiled, before Dream showed him the truth. Oh, how innocent and naive he’d been. 

He remembers Wilbur, adjusting the buttons on Tommy’s L’Manburg uniform, telling him how proud he was. 

He remembers cheering until his throat was hoarse when Tubbo hit his first bullseye with a bow and arrow.

He remembers Techno smiling and ruffling his hair, saying, ‘sure, kid’ instead of arguing when Tommy woke him by shoving his wooden sword in Techno’s sleeping face and declaring himself the winner of their unofficial sparring match. 

He remembers Phil holding him around his middle and letting him dangle down as they flew, arms outstretched as if he were soaring all on his own.

He remembers, he remembers, he remembers. 

And as the minutes trickle by, he only continues to ache. 

He rolls over a bit on the floor, trying to ease the pressure on his back, but the movement only seems to make it worse. He’s lying face down on a tarp in tnret, which isn’t the most sanitary of conditions, but he’s already covered head to toe in grime anyways. His little cot had been uncomfortable on the best of days, and now Tommy is starting to worry that he might’ve permanently ruined his back and shoulders by following the constant work in the mines with a restless sleep in a rickety cot. 

If he still had any food, he’d fish it out and try to regenerate, but it’s only ashes in the pit by now. A meal fit for the king of being a massive ass, he supposes. 

He can’t even remember the last time he felt full. 

Tommy tried bringing up the back pain once, but Dream only started laughing and cracked a joke about Tommy carrying the entire weight of the SMP on his shoulders, when they both knew that wasn’t true. 

The only metaphorical weight Tommy was carrying is his hubris, and now it appears it has finally come to crush him. 

His back spasms, and holy  _ shit  _ that hurts more than it’s supposed to. Tommy has to physically bite the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this awful. Not after Dream shot an arrow into his side during the duel, not when Techno beat the shit out of him in the pit, not even after the explosion of L’Manburg when his ears were ringing and his skin felt flayed and raw, and his head felt like a collapsing star, pulsing with pressure from all sides. 

During those times, he’d had health pots and golden apples aplenty to help him heal up after the worst was done. Here, he has nothing. 

Another spasm ripples in his back, and Tommy has a whole body reaction, his legs and shoulders shake and his breath comes out of his lungs in a wheezy cry. He wonders if this is what people mean when they say they were writhing in pain. 

His back and shoulders flinch again, sharp fireworks of pain crackling straight through his skin and into his bones, and he finally lets himself stop trying to hold back the tears. He buries his face into his arms and lets out a shuddery sob, gasping when it just seems to aggravate his muscles more. 

Something is wrong.

Something is desperately, desperately wrong. 

This should not be hurting as much as it does.

Another spasm arrives, and it feels like all the blood in his back has been replaced by an ultra-strength harming potion. He chokes on a scream and tilts his head around to look at his back. Maybe he’d gotten bit by something while he was down in the mines today. It’s perfectly possible, since Dream didn’t let him take more than the one torch he held in his off hand the whole time. Something could’ve crept up on him when he wasn’t looking.

He gives up looking when one spasm turns into thirty, and suddenly he’s struggling to breathe. If he thought the occasional twitches of indescribable pain were bad, he was not prepared for the feeling to melt into a constant blistering flame beneath his skin. The dull ache of the past month has built up into an acute burning, and he realizes that he probably should’ve seen this coming. 

He sobs again, curling his hands into fists, and a cold hand suddenly presses against his shoulder. 

Tommy gags, flinching back from the touch and crying harder into his fists. He manages to curl into a ball on the floor, turning on his side to protect himself from whoever just touched him, but after that he feels like he’s just run a marathon. 

He cracks one eye open, and through the blur of tears he sees Ghostbur’s fretting face and blue stained fingertips, hovering over Tommy’s head like he doesn’t know what to do with them but he wants to be ready for anything. 

“Tommy?” Ghostbur says softly.

Tommy screws his eyes shut as the pain continues to crescendo at a steady yet unbearable pace, and he wonders if he’d be able to pass out from the pain or if it’s simply too overwhelming for even his subconscious mind to handle. 

“I’ll go get Phil,” Ghostbur blurts hurriedly. Did Tommy accidentally say something? No, he couldn’t have, his throat is too hoarse. Why is his throat hoarse?

Oh, he’s screaming. 

Tommy wants to reach out and tell Ghostbur no, get Dream, don’t bother Phil with this, not now, but he’s already gone, and the agony in his back and shoulders is piercing every coherent thought. 

Ghostbur stands up and floats away as quickly as he’s able, crumpling up one of the biggest pieces of blue he has. Behind him, in Logstedshire, Tommy is curled up in a ball and shaking like a leaf. Every once in a while, he’ll make a sound, and it’s always loud, always in pain. 

Ghostbur doesn’t know what happened to Tommy, but Phil will know how to fix it. Phil knows how to fix everything. 

Now, Ghostbur just needs to find him. 

He repeats it like a mantra, praying to his blue that he doesn’t forget.

_ Phil. Phil. Phil. Phil. You need to find Phil. You can’t get lost. Phil. Phil. Phil. Don’t forget, find Phil.  _


	12. Chapter 12

“Phil!” Wilbur calls. “Phil, help!”

By his side, Techno tightens his grip on his wooden sword, garnet eyes sweeping the area for any sign of a threat. 

Slumped over on Wilbur’s back, Tommy is fast asleep. Every once in a while he’ll let out a groggy mumble and bury his face closer into Wilbur’s hair. 

The three of them were walking for a while before Tommy started to nod off, sinking deeper into every one of his little footsteps. So Wilbur, being the responsible older brother, offered to carry Tommy for a stretch, and the kid was out like a light. 

Wilbur only meant for them to step out for a little while, just to explore the woods while Phil was busy working in the fields. Harvest is coming up soon, and while they’re not in desperate need of extra prep time, Wilbur thought it might be nice to get the kids out of his hair while he worked.

Wilbur’s not allowed to go on adventures without Phil yet, not until he turns ten in a few years, but the rules only apply to adventures on-record. Dozens of solo missions came before this one, and he’s yet to get caught. 

This time, though, Wilbur is  _ hoping _ for Phil to swoop in and scold him. Preferably sooner rather than later, as the sun is dipping dangerously close to the horizon, and monsters are less shy about going out before sundown when they know they’ll have the thick cover of the trees. 

Wilbur was 85% sure he could take care of the three of them when they set out. Now, that number has significantly fallen. It was only meant to be a quick walk through the woods, down a path Wilbur has taken a million times. 

But then Tommy scuttled through the underbrush in search of a large stick he could use as a sword against Techno, but he was so tiny he became almost completely buried in leaves. Wilbur thought that was so funny he almost fell over laughing, and then they played ‘chase the groundhog gremlin’ until the air grew cold and Wilbur started to realize he’d lost track of the path. 

“Dad! Can you hear me?” Wilbur yells. The woods do not reply. 

Dappled through the forest canopy, Wilbur can see that the sunlight is growing richer, slipping into the honey tones of dusk. If it gets dark before Phil finds them… 

Techno is confident he could defend them if any mobs show up, but Wilbur is less willing to take that chance. Even if Techno is the best fighter of the three of them, he’s just barely graduated to using a stone sword, and he’s only allowed to hold one when Phil is watching. Thus, the wooden imitation he’s clutching carefully in one pudgy hand. 

“Maybe we should find a cave or something where we can camp for the night—or until Phil finds us,” Techno suggests. They pass a fresh sapling, and Techno bats at it with his sword just to watch it sway. 

“Are you stupid?” Wilbur hisses. “Caves are where all the mobs hang out during the day! The second the sun rises they’d start flocking toward us for shelter and we’d just be sitting there. Oh, what a lovely breakfast someone has left for us!”

“What do you suggest we do, then?” Techno growls. “We can’t just keep walking forever, especially not with you dragging Tommy around.”

“I’m fine,” Wilbur scoffs, hefting Tommy up higher in his arms, which scream out in protest. “Let’s just keep moving, I’m sure Phil will find us soon.”

Techno makes a grim face, but nods, lifting his free hand up to Tommy’s sleeping head. He runs his fingers through those blonde curls a couple times, and whether it’s for Tommy’s comfort or Techno’s own, Wilbur doesn’t know. 

They keep walking. 

Wilbur is about to suggest they try to set a tree on fire to make a smoke signal when he hears the distant sound of powerful beating wings. 

“Do you hear that?” Techno gasps, smacking Wilbur’s arm, and Wilbur is too relieved to retaliate. “Dad! Phil! Over here!”

“Down here!” Wilbur yells, scurrying over to a break in the trees so he has a clear view of the sky. There, high above and looking around frantically, is Phil in all his magnificent avian glory. He clocks the clearing where Techno is waving his arms in the air, and thank the stars for their ridiculous aesthetics, since Techno’s gleaming crown and Wilbur’s obnoxious yellow sweater are impossible to miss. 

Phil tucks his wings in and dives down, landing in front of them with a marvelous whoosh. 

“Boys!” Phil gasps, bending down to wrap them all up in his arms. They run into him, and Tommy chooses that moment to wake up and grouch at everyone to pipe down. Then he closes his eyes and nestles into Phil’s shoulder, who thankfully takes the weight off Wilbur’s back.

Wilbur and Techno make eye contact for a moment under Phil’s chin, and with just a shared nod they mutually agree to ignore the other’s teary eyes.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Phil asks, but he doesn’t sound angry, just relieved. 

“We wanted to go exploring,” Techno sniffs. “I brought my sword.”

“I can see that,” Phil murmurs. “Did Tommy fall down? Why is he covered in leaves?”

Wilbur and Techno look at each other and burst out laughing.

“Alright, tell me when we get home. C’mon, it’s getting dark.” Phil shifts Tommy onto his other side, away from Wilbur. “Techno, you hold onto me with one hand and Tommy with the other—yes, just like that—don’t worry, I’ve got you both. Now Wilbur, put your arms around my neck—no, the other way—perfect. Now hold on tight,” Phil instructs. 

Once they’re all sorted, Phil stands up and flaps his wings a few times, stirring up the underbrush beneath powerful gusts of wind. They rise up into the air and soar over the forest, and the only sign of home Wilbur can see is a little wisp of smoke twirling into the sky in the distance.

They’d wandered much further than he thought.

At least they were pointed in the right direction. 

Phil closes the distance between the clearing and home like it’s nothing, cradling the three of them securely in his arms. 

He lands in front of the porch steps and lets Wilbur and Techno down, but carries Tommy in on his hip. He opens the door and Wilbur rushes inside, claiming the seat closest to the fire in the living room for himself. 

Techno leaves his wooden sword in the cupboard by the door and hurries in after, grabbing a blanket from the basket by the couch and rolling himself up tight. 

“Technoburrito,” Wilbur snorts. Techno headbutts him.

Phil goes upstairs and tucks Tommy into bed, and once he comes back downstairs both Techno and Wilbur suddenly find the floor a very interesting subject. Better maintain an unbroken stare at it just to be sure they don’t miss any details, like the pulled stitch in the rug, when did that happen?

“I think you both are old enough to know what you did wrong,” Phil sighs. Wilbur ducks his head. “I also think you’ve had a very long day, and you’re probably exhausted. Have you eaten dinner?”

Wilbur shrinks further in his seat. That is not sufficient chastising, not for Wilbur. It was his idea, and he led the charge, as he often does. Just as often, he royally fucks it up, but this might be the biggest fuck-up yet. He doesn’t know the precise timing, but he imagines that just a few minutes later and they might’ve needed to fight off a zombie, or been shot by a skeleton, or Tommy could’ve woken up just in time to get an eyeful of an enderman, or—

“Can we have some strawberries?” Techno asks. 

Wilbur’s head shoots up. Techno hates strawberries. They’re Wilbur’s favorite.

“If that’s what you want,” Phil says, sounding just as surprised as Wilbur feels. Techno nods. “Alright, strawberries it is. I’ll also make sandwiches. You’ll need to replenish your energy after the day you’ve had.”

Phil walks into the kitchen and the gentle sounds of food prep float into the living room alongside the crackling of the fire. Wilbur turns a suspicious eye to Techno, one eyebrow raised. 

“Strawberries?” Wilbur asks. 

Techno’s shoulders jerk in a little shrug. “I don’t actually mind them, it’s just the principle of the thing.”

“What principles could you possibly have about liking strawberries?” Wilbur counters. 

“You love them, and it annoys you when I make fun of them,” Techno replies with a smirk. Wilbur tosses a pillow at his face, and Techno’s arms are too wrapped up in his Technoburrito to deflect it, so all Techno has in retaliation is a withering glare.

“Really though, why choose now of all times to have a miraculous change of heart?” Wilbur asks. Again, Techno shrugs. 

“You looked like you were beating yourself up about it. All of us wanted to give Dad a break, and it’s not anyone’s fault Tommy’s a shrimp that would drown in a teaspoon of water,” Techno snorts. “We were just playing.”

“I guess,” Wilbur sighs and draws his knees up to his chest. 

Carefully, from the kitchen, Phil listens in to their conversation. He usually tries to respect his kids’ privacy, but when he heard the bit about giving Dad a break, his shoulders sagged and he surreptitiously crept closer to the door so he could better eavesdrop. 

“You’re always trying to be a leader, and when it doesn’t work out you get all mopey because you feel like you need to take charge of the responsibility, too,” Techno points out. “Someday it’s gonna be too much and it’ll drive you to insanity.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Wilbur scoffs. “I’m just trying to be a good big brother.”

“And you are,” Techno mumbles. “Me and Tommy both, we don’t want you to be so harsh on yourself all the time. You’re already pretty cool, or whatever.”

Wilbur looks down at the ground. “You’re pretty cool, too,” he mutters. “The only reason I wasn’t scared frozen was because you’re such a good fighter.”

Techno grins all the way up to his canines. “Thanks.”

“Food’s ready!” Phil picks that moment to call out. Two sets of small footsteps patter into the kitchen, and Phil sets down two sandwiches beside an enormous plate of strawberries. Then he sits across from the two of them and plucks a few strawberries from the plate, popping one into his mouth. 

Wilbur takes one bite of his sandwich, then wrinkles his nose. 

“Did you give us the buttcheek pieces?” Wilbur asks, pointing to the bread, where indeed, one of the two heels of the loaf sits. Techno has the other one, but he doesn’t really mind, happily chowing down. 

“I did,” Phil replies smugly. “That is your punishment for wandering the woods without my supervision. Next time, remember the pain of an all-crust sandwich, and don’t do it again. Understood?”

“Yes,” Techno chirps. He reaches for the plate of strawberries and takes one, chewing thoughtfully. “Been a while since I’ve had to pretend to turn my nose up at these things, they’re actually pretty good!”

Wilbur looks away from Techno—the little shit—and turns confused eyes up at Phil, who just gives him one of those soft fatherly smiles.

“I—yes, understood,” Wilbur says quietly. “Thanks for saving us.”

“Anytime, anyplace,” Phil vows. “The two of you were very brave today. I’m sure it was scary, and I know you’ve learned not to do it again, which is the best thing that can come from any mistake. I’m very proud of you for staying strong and keeping each other and your little brother safe, even when you were scared.”

Inexplicably, tears start to well up in Wilbur’s eyes. He scrubs them away, but nothing escapes Phil’s watchful gaze. 

“Aww,” he tuts, coming around to the side of the table and wrapping Wilbur up in his arms. 

That does it for Wilbur, who turns his face into Phil’s side and cries, his shoulders trembling with sobs. He reaches up and clutches at Phil’s shirt, while Phil rubs comforting circles on Wilbur’s back. 

After a few minutes, Phil pulls back and cups Wilbur’s face in his hands, wiping away the tears with his thumbs. “Listen to me, both of you. Anytime you find yourself lost or afraid, just do exactly as you did tonight. Be brave, be strong, look out for your brothers, and look for me. I promise I'll always come to get you, alright?”

“Alright,” Wilbur mumbles. Across the table, Techno gives a serious nod. 

“Wonderful,” Phil reaches out and pets Techno’s hair, straightening his crown. Giving Wilbur one last squeeze, he reaches over and picks up their empty plates. He takes them to the sink and washes them down, letting the kids pick away at the last of the strawberries while he sets the plates out to dry. 

“Alright you two, off to bed now,” Phil instructs, and they leap from their chairs, racing up the stairs. Techno reaches the top first, shouting a triumphant cry. It’s getting harder to beat Wilbur in a footrace, now that Wilbur’s gotten taller and his legs are longer. 

Phil follows after them and tucks them into bed, and the moment Wilbur’s head hits the pillow, his eyelids slip down as if weighted by stones. 

He’s fast asleep by the time Phil douses the torch.


	13. Chapter 13

Torches!

Ghostbur smiles and floats down the path of torches posted in the snow. If there are torches here then there must be people, maybe they can tell him where he is!

He’s careful not to float too close to the ground, because the snow gives him a funny burning sensation in his feet, even though he’s wearing shoes. Sometimes he’ll go warm and numb all the way up his leg, and if he doesn’t focus on it, it’ll disappear. 

He breaks past the treeline and is treated to the cozy sight of Technoblade’s house. 

Oh, what luck! Somehow he’d gotten all turned around when he left… wherever he was… 

But he followed a trail that his heart remembered but his brain forgot, and it tossed him out at Technoblade’s house! Today is just going perfectly. The sun is high in the sky, not a storm cloud in sight. Ghostbur was a little worried about that, when he realized last night that he was headed for snow, but he stayed floating high, and he made it through. 

He takes the stairs up to Technoblade’s door, to be polite, and knocks three times. 

There’s a slight rustling inside, and the sound of something heavy and metallic scraping a little against wood, and then the door is pulled open. 

“Oh! Ghostbur, good to see you again!” Phil says. There’s a sound of that same metallic thing being dropped by the door, and Ghostbur wants to roll his eyes. Oh, Technoblade, always picking up a sword or axe of some sort whenever someone comes to the door. He sure does like showing new people his weapons. 

“Good to see you too, Phil!” Ghostbur smiles. “How have you been?”

“Very good, thank you,” Phil steps to the side and motions inward, giving Ghostbur space to squeeze past Phil’s wings. “Please, come in!”

Ghostbur floats into the house, taking a look around the place. There are more chests than last time, taking up most of the far wall. By the sink, Techno is rinsing some tea out of a mug. 

“Come, sit! It’s been a while,” Phil plops down onto the plush couch, gesturing at the chairs around the living room. Ghostbur floats over to one near the fire and gets comfortable, warming his hands up. 

Oh, they look more blue than he remembers. Something sad must’ve happened. 

“How are the bees doing?” Ghostbur asks. “I think last time I came here you… they were out… flying around because…” Phil lets Ghostbur chew on the memory for a minute, giving an encouraging smile. Phil is considerate like that, he wants Ghostbur to get better at remembering, so he’ll wait or gently prompt him whenever Ghostbur searches for a thought. Lots of people just blurt it out over him, and sometimes if he talks too slowly they think he’s not thinking and they’ll interrupt him.

Phil doesn’t do that. He’s a very good Dad.

“They escaped! You were putting a new bottling rig in and left the hatch open on accident and some of them escaped!” Ghostbur cheers. 

“Correct!” Phil claps. “They’re doing very well now, no more jailbreaks as of yet.” He settles down more in the couch, tilting his head so he can check on the hatch door from the window. Satisfied that it’s not open, he turns back to Ghostbur and smiles. 

Ghostbur gives him a thumbs-up. 

“How’s Tommy holding up?” Phil asks. Something pained flickers on his face, but it only lasts a moment, and Ghostbur isn’t so good at recognizing the particulars in sad emotions anymore. 

“Oh! Tommy, yes, he’s very good, he—” Ghostbur goes very, very still. 

He looks down at the blue staining his hands, and he remembers. 

Letting out what can only be described as a panicked wail, Ghostbur leaps to his feet and grabs Phil by the shoulders, holding as tight as he can. 

“Ghostbur?! What’s wrong? What happened?” Phil asks frantically. Technoblade has already whipped his sword from its sheath and holds it at the ready, eyes scanning the room. 

“Tommy! He’s in trouble!” Ghostbur bawls. “I can’t believe I forgot!”

“What kind of trouble?” Phil asks, already tugging on his boots. 

“I don’t know exactly, but he’s hurt! Oh, he’s so very very hurt, he was screaming and crying when I left, I thought he was going to die!” Ghostbur pulls a handful of blue from his pockets, as much as he can carry, and squeezes. It instantly drenches to midnight in his hands. “I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he couldn’t speak, he just looked at me and cried. So I said, ‘wait right here, Tommy. I’ll go get Phil, he knows what to do.’ And then as I was going I kept saying, don’t forget! You need to find Phil and save Tommy, so don’t get lost!” Ghostbur takes a gasping breath, the panic in his heart bleeding out like it’ll melt him right there. “And then I got lost! And I forgot! And I don’t know how long it’s been! We need to hurry, hurry, quick!”

Technoblade yanks open the door and breaks out in a run towards a portal in the distance. Ghostbur didn’t know it was there. Maybe if he’d taken it, he could’ve gotten here faster. Maybe Tommy is still crying in tnret, trembling tight and gasping for air. Maybe he’s already dead and Ghostbur was too late because he’s a stupid useless ghost who can’t remember anything important like everyone wants him to.

He only has happy memories with Tommy, and there’s so many he can’t even count them all. 

If Ghostbur loses Tommy, it will destroy him.

The three of them sprint for the portal, and Ghostbur’s blue heart throbs like a drum.


	14. Chapter 14

Tommy’s heart is working overdrive to fill him back up, since most of his blood has somehow ended up outside his body, unfortunately.

Not long after Ghostbur left, the pain began to centralize into two parallel stripes down his back, starting at his shoulder blades and going all the way down to the bottom of his ribcage. It was like dull talons were trying to tear him apart from the inside, dragging through skin and muscle over and over and over again. 

In a desperate attempt to relieve some of the pain, Tommy clawed at his shirt in a blind haze, not even registering that he’d torn through the fabric completely until it was falling to the ground in a tattered heap. 

Then, a warm dribbling feeling crept down his sides, and he drew a trembling hand up to feel it. 

When he brought it back, it was covered in blood. 

Now, Tommy scrambles up from his previous position—curled in a ball on the tnret floor—and twists around, trying to see wherever he’d been stabbed or bitten or slashed. 

The twisting only makes the pain worse, and Tommy lets out a cry, collapsing into the soft wall of tnret. His breaths feel too tight in his throat, every exhale is a pained wheeze, every inhale a shuddering sob. 

Through tears, he sees that the wool around him is splattered with a ridiculous amount of his blood. It’s so ghoulish and strange, Tommy might laugh if he wasn’t fighting through indescribable pain. 

He sinks down to the floor again and screams his throat raw. 

His mind is going haywire, clinging to any thought it can hold onto long enough that it will distract him from the pain. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s crying out for his family. 

_ Phil, Techno, Wilbur, anyone, please! _

The tearing sensation jolts up through his shoulders, and Tommy’s vision goes white. He gags, but nothing comes up, his stomach has been empty for days. He reaches a blind hand out for something—anything to hold onto—and comes in contact with the wooly surface of tnret.

His fingers clench, and he doesn’t let go. 

Clinging to tnret like a lifeline, his fists ball up so tightly that the fabric tears, and his hands drop down to his side, still gripping onto the scraps of wool tight enough that he feels blood start to trickle down from his palms. 

His back convulses again, bringing a new gush of blood, and he tries to scream again but his voice has been completely ripped away. 

He is going to die like this, all alone and slick with blood.

_ Make it stop,  _ Tommy sobs. He can’t tell if he’s speaking aloud.  _ Someone please make it stop. _

There’s a pulling sensation, like a dam being broken loose, and Tommy feels heavier. His left shoulder is being yanked down by some invisible weight, while his right is bunched up to his ears and tensing tight as if his muscles are made of stone. Whatever is weighing on Tommy’s shoulder is also pulling at the fresh wounds, and it feels like someone dug an axe into his back and started wiggling. 

The sensation is matched on his right side just a second later, and Tommy clenches his eyes shut, waiting for his heart to finally give up on trying to save him. 

Something that feels like ribbons unravel beneath his skin, drawing themselves out from where they’d been lying dormant against his bones. The sound is grotesque, like sucking jello through a straw. Tommy’s voice is gone, so he can only gasp and sob along to the noise.

The lumps of weight in his shoulders start to unfurl, and as they do, the ribbons slither out from beneath his skin and follow towards the open wounds on his back, desperate to escape. 

Tommy feels the last of the ribbons finally slip away and detach from his bones like the last teeth of velcro, and then he hears a wet plop behind him. 

Then, the sensations stop. 

It’s eerily silent, aside from Tommy’s ragged breathing. 

His back throbs, blood pulsing from twin open wounds, but it’s almost a relief, now that it doesn’t feel like his sinews are falling out of him string by ragged string. 

He just feels empty, hollow, aflame. 

His head is fuzzy and light, like someone reached into his brain and twisted, wringing it out like a sponge.

He takes a few bubbling breaths, and his tongue is like a heavy stone in his throat. He cracks open one eye, then the other, and takes in the darkness of the night. It swims around him like he’s underwater. 

Something twitches in his back, and there’s a rustling against the tarp. 

Oh, fuck. 

Tommy turns his head, slow as he can manage, dreading what he’ll see behind him. It feels like his organs and muscles have just sloshed out of him. 

On the ground behind him, connected to his back, just beneath his shoulder blades, there’s a quivering mound of sopping wet flesh. It pulses and twitches in faint little movements, as though connected to his heart. Perhaps reacting to Tommy’s attention, it flinches, and the movement reflects maroon shapes in the moonlight. 

It’s covered in sticky red feathers. 

“What the fuck,” Tommy rasps. The feathers twitch again. 

He reaches back to give them a tentative poke, but his hands stop short. He’s still gripping onto the side of tnret. 

He tries to let go, but his hands don’t budge. 

They’re curled up tight, and his knuckles have long since gone from white to purple with the stress. 

He tries to let go again. 

His hands refuse. 

Growling, Tommy yanks his hands back and pulls the strips of torn fabric from the tent completely, so now he only holds onto two individual fists of wool. The feathers skitter weakly across the tarp with the movement, and one of the piles of flesh unfurls from itself, the bundle flopping out into the shape of a gigantic wing. 

Tommy freezes. 

The other mound flaps a bit, not wanting to miss out on the action, and unfolds so Tommy can see the full twelve-foot wingspan in all its sticky red glory. 

These are wings. 

Why are there wings?

They flap a little in response to the thought, and Tommy realizes with a start that he’s controlling their movements. 

There are wings, and they’re his. 

He has wings. 

“What the  _ fuck, _ ” Tommy chokes. The wings flap again, as if to say ‘don’t look at us, we know as much as you do, buddy.’

Unfortunately, the movement pulls at the cuts in his back, and he cries out, squeezing his eyes shut again. The wounds on his palms reopen, and his hands go warm with blood. Apparently, wool can only absorb so much before it gives up. 

Shit.

Tommy has wings.

He’s sitting in a puddle of his own blood, and he has  _ wings _ . 

Is this like Phil? Are they the same? Or is this a nightmare?

Surely it’s just a dream, Phil said avian genetics were almost evolved out by now. No way is  _ Tommy _ of all people the exception. 

Tommy would pinch himself, but his fingers are already focused on pinching his palms, as tight as they can. He turns his attention back to the horror of pain and blood behind him. 

Yeah, definitely not a dream. 

The wings flap again, harder this time, and the wound in his back goes electric with pain. Tommy buries his face into his elbows, because his hands are unavailable at the moment, and swallows around the bile and empty stomach acid threatening to choke its way out of his throat. 

His back trembles and twitches, and the wings quiver along with it. His fists shake. He needs to get up, he needs to do  _ something.  _ This much blood loss can’t be good for him. 

A distant memory bubbles up, and he’s too exhausted to stop it. 

_ “It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever gone through. A bunch of my traveling buddies had to keep splashing me with numbing and instant healing throughout the whole thing, and even then I still felt like I was going to pass out or just die a few times. I do not recommend it.”  _

Well, shit. Phil definitely wasn’t joking around or exaggerating any of that. Not even a little bit.

Tommy doesn’t have any traveling buddies, nor does he have instant healing or numbing. He’s going to need to keep himself alive with rudimentary first-aid and sheer force of will.

Finally daring to twist around enough to glance at his back, he realizes he can’t see much, just the edge of what looks to be a long, ragged cut. It feels like it goes from the tops of his shoulder blades down to the base of his ribcage and it’s about an inch or two wide—where he can see. The edges are uneven and frayed, like someone punched through a piece of paper, and there’s a matching laceration on the other side. 

The wings must’ve sprouted through there, he realizes. That ribbony sucking sensation must’ve been his feathers pulling through from where they’d been developing on… his ribs? He can’t really remember, he wasn’t exactly focusing on the mechanics in the moment.

He needs to get them stitched up, asap. At this rate he’ll be dead from blood loss by the time Dream even bothers to come back. 

Oh, fuck.

Dream. 

_ “If it was someone weaker, I’d chop them off in a heartbeat.”  _

Tommy is definitely weaker than Phil, and since Dream is in charge of Tommy’s every move… 

Dream will chop them off. 

Tommy’s grip on the tnret scraps, which had been marginally loosening since the wings were done sprouting, tenses up again. New rivulets of blood creep ever so slowly down his arms, and he lets out a frustrated groan. 

He needs to get out of here. 

He wanted to leave before, but now he’s sure. He can’t let Dream take them. He’s been through too much to just let them go. 

He could stay for a little longer, if he needs to. Dream only comes by once or twice a week now, and after that day yesterday he’ll probably want to punish Tommy for being ungrateful by leaving him alone for longer. 

Or he’ll come back tomorrow, with food and kind words and proud smiles, and Tommy will just be drawn back in. 

Pressing his knuckles against the crafting table, Tommy pulls himself to his feet. 

Slowly, carefully, he draws deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. 

_ Please, wings, don’t move. Just stay limp. Don’t move. _

Miraculously, Tommy manages to stand up, and he leans heavily against the crafting table to ward off the fuzziness of his head. His muscles tingle like they’re all asleep, and his ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. His wings stay still. 

He bends down to a chest beside where the bed used to be and paws it open with his still closed fists. Seriously, what’s up with that? Why can’t he let go? 

He rummages around in the chest until he finds his first-aid kit. He definitely doesn’t have enough disinfectant to cover his entire back, but maybe he can find a bottle of water or something and— 

Fuck. 

He can’t get it open. 

The little clasp on the white box taunts him in the moonlight, smudged with blood from his clenched hands. 

Tommy growls and grits his teeth so he doesn’t start crying. 

He needs to stay calm. He can’t afford to waste time getting frustrated. 

He takes a deep breath and listens to the whisper of the waves on the nearby shore, letting the sound wash over him. 

Wait. 

The shore, that’s water.

Not the most sanitary water in the world, but still water. If he can get over there then he can clean his wounds at the very least, maybe he won’t be able to get the first-aid kit open, but he’ll be able to see the damage a bit better. It’s a step in the right direction. 

Tommy drops the first-aid kit onto the crafting table so he can access it right when he gets back, then takes a single staggering step over to the shore. 

It’s only about ten paces, but that’s ten paces more than any person suffering from major blood loss could reasonably take, especially with six feet of blood drenched wings dragging behind them. 

Tommy can do it. 

One step at a time.

His wings leave a bloodied trail behind him in the dirt, splattering on the tall grass of the plains and disrupting his pressed path, but he ignores it. 

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, he shoves down the urge to collapse until his feet hit sparkling white sand. 

The moon is high in the sky, a pale spotlight guiding his way. 

Just a few more steps, and he’ll be in the water. He can do this. 

Finally, his bare feet hit the lapping shore, and he collapses to his knees. The wings rustle a little, and he lets out a pained whimper, but shuffles forward, deeper into the frigid waters, until they reach his injured back. 

Phil always said his wings made swimming a bit of a hassle, but he never had any troubles in the rain, so Tommy hopes they won’t just fill up and drag him down, drowning him before he has the chance to die from blood loss. 

He crawls deeper. 

The water feels nice on his feverish skin, and after a while the sharp, stinging pain in his back turns into a violent ache, each movement of the waves pulling his wings back and forth, rhythmically tugging on his wounds. 

All around, the water turns crimson. 

Tommy tilts his head back and gazes at the stars. 

He’s on the edge of a full-blown panic attack, he knows. He can feel it thrumming under his skin, worming into his heart and lungs, ready to burst. 

He won’t let it, not yet. Not until he’s a couple steps further away from death. 

He doesn’t want to die like this. 

It’s oddly comforting, sitting in the prolonged silence before the fall. He likes that he knows it’s coming. Before, panic would just settle over him like a storm, sticking onto his bones and latching on tight, and then he’s instantly trapped in a frenzy that eats him from the inside out. 

Here, he feels detached from it all. 

Here, he’s only floating. 

He waits with his face turned up at the moon for a few more minutes, watching it creep past the stars. 

Then, he turns his head and looks at the feathers rippling under the water. 

They’re beautiful, just beautiful. 

Now that the blood has been mostly washed away, Tommy can see they’re a lot brighter red than he’d thought, and they’re speckled with stripes of gold. 

They reach out on both sides, the feathers lengthening as they go further out, until they turn into massive flight feathers, broad and glossy under the water. They look like weapons, like one swoop will send enough air back to throw him up into the stars. There’s a strange sort of power emanating from them, but it doesn’t feel scary. 

It feels familiar.

Down to every last barb and plume of down, every streak of gold weaving between brilliant red, Tommy  _ knows  _ them. They’re  _ his.  _

These are Tommy’s wings, and he’ll be damned if he lets Dream take them away from him. 

Finally, he pulls himself up out of the water. At some point while he’d been floating, his fingers released the scraps of fabric, and they were swept far out into the open sea. He looks down at his hands and winces at the ripped up skin on his palms. He can bandage them when he gets back to tnret. 

Seeing his wings did something to Tommy. He’s got his fire back, he’s got a pep in his step. 

He’s going to survive this. 

He’s going to survive this, and he’s going to protect his wings with everything he’s got. 

Tommy trudges out from the water, further from tnret than when he’d gone in. The current must’ve swept him around for a bit, but that’s fine. He can walk a few more steps, if he just keeps his cool and takes it one at a time. 

He passes a little tidepool by the beach, the surface is glassy and still. That could work, actually. 

He staggers over to tnret and drags the first aid kit off the crafting table, holding it with his fingertips so he doesn’t aggravate his shredded palms. Then he pulls himself back over to the tidepool and collapses onto his knees in front of it. 

Now, with a reflective surface, he can sort of see the wounds. He has to lean over a bit to do it, which tugs at his shoulders and wings, but at least he won’t be going in blind. 

Luckily, they don’t look nearly as bad as he thought. It would be counterintuitive for his wings to completely sever the muscles in his back, so there must’ve been some genetic pathway created for the feathers to break through his skin. That must be what Phil meant when he said avians needed a very specific bone structure. If Tommy was only human, the wings would have no way of getting out without killing him. 

Still, he does have two gaping open slits on his back, so he’ll need to stitch them up mostly blind. The most complicated part is going to be the jagged edges. He’s going to need to sort of jigsaw himself back together—ugh, just the thought is making him queasy again. 

Tommy pulls out some disinfectant pads of gauze and swipes them over his palms, gritting his teeth at the pain but keeping his breathing steady. He can’t afford to get stressed out again and start grabbing shit. 

Phil always told him to grab onto something—his hand, or the couch, or whatever else was in the vicinity—whenever he needed to get first-aid. Maybe he knew, all along, that Tommy was a little grabby. Some birds will stress grip when they’re overstimulated, and those genetics must’ve slipped into Tommy’s body along with his wings. 

Tommy wraps his hands in bandages as sparingly as he can. He’ll need to save most of his meager supplies for his back. 

Then, he sanitizes a suture needle, threads it, and sets to work. 

It hurts, Tommy isn’t going to pretend it doesn’t. 

Even with the help of the pool behind him, he needs to gingerly feel along the edges to know where exactly he’s working. 

A few times, he goes a little too shallow, or a little too deep, and he needs to pull the needle out and do it again. 

But then he just remembers the brain-splitting agony of when the wings had first sprouted, grits his teeth, and tells himself it’s not that bad. 

By the time he’s finished, the moon is sitting down just above the horizon, and the black night sky is being chased back by a powdery morning blue. 

He takes a deep breath and inspects his work in the pool. The stitches are wonky, and they wobble around the uneven edges like cracked stone, but he’s not bleeding as much anymore. He sets to work wrapping his torso in bandages, as tight as he can manage without his vision going spotty, and when he gets to the bits above where the wings are anchored to his body, he stops and grabs a thick piece of gauze. He tears it in two then tapes the pieces over the stitches, securing them on either side of his wings so they won’t come undone if he moves too much. 

That’s going to be another problem. Every time his wings make an attempt to move, they pull on the stitches, and he can’t just keep dragging them limply behind him or else they might get caught on something and he’ll be torn open again. 

He sighs and packs up the first aid kit, then wobbles up to his feet. It’s nearly dawn, and then he’ll need to make his escape. More likely than not, Dream is going to want to come back and see if Tommy has been properly traumatized by his night alone after that day spent in the dark mines. He’ll tell Tommy it’s his fault for making Dream upset, and Tommy will apologize, and then Dream will say he forgives him. Tommy will feel dreadful, he doesn’t deserve Dream’s forgiveness, and Dream will ruffle his hair and remind Tommy that he’s the only one that cares about him anyway. Tommy will wish he was dead. 

No, that’s not what will happen this time. If Tommy stays, Dream will say Tommy can earn his forgiveness by giving Dream his wings. Tommy doesn’t even know what Dream expects to do with them, it’s not like you can reattach them to someone else once they’ve been severed. Maybe he’ll just hang them up in his base as a trophy of Tommy’s defeat. 

Tommy won’t let him. 

These wings are  _ his.  _

They sprouted from Tommy’s back, and they’re connected to Tommy’s brain. They beat from Tommy’s heart, they live off Tommy’s blood. 

They are Tommy’s wings, and this is Tommy’s life. 

Dream has no right to take that away. 

Tommy heads back to tnret and assesses the damage. 

It looks like a warzone.

There’s a comically disgusting splatter of blood up against the side, where he’d flung himself back near the beginning of it all. Beside that, two holes are torn down in desperate strips, obviously made by someone’s hands, by the shapes at the top. The tarp is like an ocean of blood, pooling in the cracks and oozing out onto the dirt. There are some other splatters and swipes—probably from his wings when they’d first unfurled. In one corner, the tatters of his old favorite shirt soak up the blood like a really shitty rag. 

It’s really a miracle Tommy survived this. 

Again, something in his genetics must’ve saved him. If this was normal for avians once upon a time, maybe the blood loss wasn’t so much of an issue as Tommy thought, but  _ fuck  _ if it doesn’t terrify him. All that blood spilled from his body, and he still had enough to spare.

Hopefully, once Dream sees all this he’ll think Tommy died to a mob of some sort. 

Or just spontaneously exploded like a blood balloon. 

There aren’t any feathers lying about, which is good. Tommy hasn’t had his wings long enough to molt, so he hopes the current feathers are still firmly attached. Sometimes Tommy used to find little bits of snowy down and in some cases, fully molted flight feathers, scattered around their childhood home if Phil forgot to take care of them. If Dream finds a massive red and gold feather lying in the middle of the blood puddle, he’ll probably be quick to connect the dots.

At least Tommy doesn’t have any real belongings he might think about taking with him, not since Dream started gradually destroying everything Tommy owned. Tommy depends on Dream for  _ everything  _ now. 

Tommy picks up a tool belt he can use in place of a backpack or satchel while his back heals. 

He’ll probably never wear a backpack again, actually. How strange. 

He clasps the first-aid kit to the belt, and it tumbles around a little awkwardly, but he’s not going to leave it behind, not while his stitches are so precarious. 

He doesn’t have any tools, but he puts a few sticks into the loop where one might carry a shovel or a pickaxe, so he doesn’t need to mine down a tree to make more. There isn’t any food left, so he won’t be able to regenerate until he gets further out. Dream made sure to control when Tommy was allowed to eat, so he slaughtered all the animals for a couple thousand blocks. 

Tommy knows he’s not a good person, and he doesn’t deserve it, but that always felt a little excessive. 

Come to think of it, lots of things Dream does to him feel excessive. His eye and ribs still feel a little sore from his last beating, although it’s nothing compared to the pain of his wings growing in. 

Not for the first time, Tommy wonders if Dream was lying to him. 

No time to angst about that now, though. The sky is brightening up more. Soon the clouds will get all pink and lovely with the sunrise, and Tommy will be gone. 

Now, about his wings. 

Tommy tries to curl them up the way Phil did, tucking the joints up close around his head and letting the tips hover just above the ground, and his stitches burn with the effort. He grits his teeth and tries again, slower this time, and manages to get them off the ground. 

He reaches out and holds them close to his body, and gives himself a second to breathe. 

The panic is mounting, faster than before. 

But it’s not here yet, Tommy still has time.

He grabs one of the non-adhesive bandages from the first-aid kit at his hip and pulls it over his head, ignoring how the movement tugs at his shoulder stitches. He’s glad he didn’t just mummify himself all the way up to the neck in bandages. 

He maneuvers the strip of fabric over the tips of his wings and brings it down behind him, then draws the ends around the front of his body so he’s got a little rope belt holding the wings together close. He ties it in a knot and tightens it as hard as he dares, praying that he’s not just ripping apart the stitches by changing the angle where his wings can sit. 

Then he forces his wings to go limp, and they sag against the restraint, held firmly in place. 

Hooray for small mercies. 

Now that he’s more compact, he pulls the last item from his chest. 

Wilbur’s coat. 

He hasn’t worn it yet, telling Ghostbur it just hasn’t gotten cold enough for floor-length winter coats so he doesn’t hurt his feelings. 

The truth is, he hates this coat. 

It’s all Wilbur wore, near the end. All of Tommy’s worst memories with Wilbur are associated with this coat. There’s a clean slice through the back, where Phil’s sword had pierced him through. 

Tommy hates it. 

But the collar is high, and the hem is low, so for Tommy’s purpose, it’s perfect. 

He tosses the coat over his shoulders and works his arms into the sleeves, slowly, carefully. 

Tommy has never been slow, nor careful, not until tonight. 

The coat hugs his wings up against his body, and he imagines he must look like he’s trying to smuggle half a house inside it, but he doesn’t need to blend in with much, just the forest. 

He does up a few of the buttons, but his wings ache in protest of the tight quarters when he tries to cover himself entirely. That’s fine, he just needs something to hide the bandages around his torso in case he runs into a village. It doesn’t need to be perfect. 

He steps back and gives one last look at Logstedshire. He takes in the sight of his tent, now stained red, and the pockmarks of craters that shackled Tommy’s dependence to Dream for supplies. He looks at the top of Ghostbur’s blue tent, peeking over the uneven edges of his stripped log walls. He never got a chance to test out its sad-soaking abilities, but he hopes it worked alright for Ghostbur, back when he stuck around. 

Then he picks a direction and starts walking. 

One step at a time.

The sun is a fat round lantern in the sky, and the air fills with the sound of twittering birds, signaling the blush of a new dawn.


	15. Chapter 15

Dawn is much too early for Phil to be awake. 

The sun is barely a sliver over the horizon, and in the west, the sky is still a heavy blue. He wouldn’t have awoken at this hour naturally, which means something must’ve jolted him up. 

He sits up in his bed and listens for anything amiss. It could’ve just been one of the kids kicking a wall in their sleep, but old paranoia forces him to question every little irregularity. If his body thinks he needs to be awake, he will listen to it. 

The house is quiet, not even a zombie’s low grumble can be heard from the yard. 

Phil sighs. Maybe he’s finally gone senile.

Then—a noise. 

It sounds like a bird, but it’s louder than the ones outside. Something must’ve gotten in.

Phil kicks the blankets off his legs and toes into his slippers, grabbing a broom from the closet on his way out of his room. 

Birds are lovely creatures, and he thinks he’s supposed to feel some sort of kinship with them, but sometimes they can just be bothersome. 

Also, they’re dumb as rocks. The last time a bird got into the house, it slammed itself into the closed windows about eight times before Phil finally managed to get the sticky latch open. He’d tried trilling calm tones at it, but there’s no phrase in bird language for  _ be patient, idiot.  _

Phil doesn’t actually think there are any words in bird language, just noisiness. 

He reaches the end of the hall and is about to go thumping down the stairs to let the bird know it’s time to go home when he stops short. 

Tommy is standing by the window, balanced atop a kitchen chair so he can reach, and for once in his life he isn’t bouncing off the walls with energy. Standing on the windowsill, with its head tilted critically in Tommy’s direction, is a young songbird. 

The bird chirps and hops over to Tommy’s hand, and Phil’s eyes widen when Tommy reaches up and gently pets the bird on the head, just under its ears. The bird doesn’t seem to mind, in fact it nudges into Tommy’s hand and chirps again. 

Phil is surprised again when Tommy chirps back. 

They seem to be holding a conversation of some sort. The songbird flits around on the windowsill, chirping up at Tommy and occasionally bumping into Tommy’s hand, who will then reach two fingers up and softly rub its cheek or neck. Tommy will interrupt with his own clumsy little coos, and sometimes they’ll try to copy each other’s sounds. 

Tommy actually isn’t half bad, he’s somehow managed to find the vocal register to cheep and chirp just like Phil sometimes does when he’s bored. It shouldn’t be possible for normal humans to chirp like this, but Tommy has always been one for defying expectations. Wilbur and Techno always make fun of Phil for twittering around like an overgrown chicken, and Tommy likes to join in on the fun and squawk exaggeratedly until someone (usually Wilbur) shuts him up. 

Is that why this is the first Phil is hearing of this? Tommy must be too shy to show off his real skills in front of his brothers. It’s always been a bit of a game for him to screech like he’s trying to imitate a real bird, and it always annoys Wilbur and Techno, which Tommy probably counts as a win. 

The bird nudges Tommy’s hand with its beak and Tommy giggles, letting out a string of soft noises like he’s sharing a secret. The bird responds and hops into Tommy’s hand and Tommy does a delighted little pitter-patter with his toes.

He’s actually inhumanly good at it. Maybe… 

No, surely not.

Phil huffs in amusement and creeps back to his room. He closes the door slowly, so as to not disturb his little bird’s conversation, and climbs back into bed. 

Tommy is simply being his normal, uncanny self. It’s no matter that he can cheep like Phil and always had a sharp eye for shiny rocks sticking out in the sun. That’s just the way Tommy is, nothing more. It would be silly to expect anything different.

With that thought, Phil settles into the covers. There’s a rustle as he gets his wings situated, and then he’s out like a light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAOOOOOO INCONVENIENT FLASHBACK INTERMISSION POG


	16. Chapter 16

Techno squints against the light of the midday sun as they step out of the portal. Phil rushes out first, and Techno needs to duck to keep from getting knocked over by his wing. He scans the area; this is where Ghostbur said Tommy’s base was, but Techno can’t find any solid shelter nearby. He’d been expecting some gigantic cobblestone abomination, but the plains are flat and empty save for a small white tent just a little in the distance. 

Ghostbur sprints for it, so Techno and Phil follow after him. 

“Tommy!” Ghostbur cries. “Tommy, are you there?”

As they get closer, Techno’s heart drops into his stomach. The side of the tent has been torn open by something, and the scraps sway ragged in the wind. He picks up his pace, passing Ghostbur, and skids to a stop in front of its open flaps. 

The moment he sees what’s inside, he throws a hand out and pushes Phil back. 

“What? What is it?” Phil asks frantically. Ghostbur comes around Techno’s other side, simply phasing through the hand Techno holds up to stop him. 

“Tommy—?” Ghostbur cuts himself off with a violent gasp, hands flying to his mouth. He staggers back, and his eyes fill with blue tears. 

“What’s wrong with him? Where is—” Phil finally manages to duck around Techno, and once he catches a glimpse of the blood, he freezes still. 

Techno tightens his grip around the handle of his sword.

“Tommy!” Ghostbur wails. He floats over their heads and makes a beeline for the other structure nearby, a blue tent surrounded by stripped logs. “Tommy, are you here?”

“He can’t—can’t have gotten far,” Phil stammers. He ducks into the tent and opens the single solitary chest inside. It’s empty. Cast aside on the floor lies the shredded remains of Tommy’s favorite red and white shirt. 

There’s no way Tommy survived this. 

There’s too much blood. Techno knows blood, and he knows when there’s so much gone that the heart stops beating. 

No human would’ve lived through this.

But it’s Tommy,  _ Tommy!  _ He can’t be dead, it doesn’t fit. If Tommy is dead then the world should be turned inside out. The sun should’ve gone black, the oceans should’ve emptied, the air should be turned to ash. 

Logically, Techno knows this isn’t true. The world just kept moving on when Wilbur died, the sun still set in the evening and the stars still shone at night. If Tommy died here, nobody would have noticed until the next time someone came to visit. 

But it doesn’t fit. 

This can’t be the end for his baby brother. 

“I can’t find him,” Ghostbur gasps, floating back to their side. “I can’t find him.”

“Where did he go?” Phil whispers. 

“Damn,” Dream sighs, appearing behind them. “I was hoping you guys could tell me.”

Techno whirls around and sticks the tip of his sword at Dream’s stupid mask.

“What did you do to him?” Techno snarls. 

“Woah, take it easy!” Dream steps back and holds his hands up in mock surrender. “I don’t know, I got here just before you guys did. I’ve been searching the perimeter looking for him.”

“Where could he have gone?” Phil clutches at his hair and steps out of the tent, eyes flicking over the plains for any sign. Techno wonders if he’s still holding out hope, even though Phil has seen the same bloodshed in his life as Techno. He wonders if Phil is just looking for a body to bury. 

“Well,” Dream shrugs. “I don’t think he ‘went’ anywhere. I think he probably got himself torn to shreds by mobs and they dragged his corpse off somewhere, probably the water,” Dream gestures in the general direction of the beach, and Techno’s eyes land on a bloody path down to the ocean. There are no footsteps, just heavy drag marks in the sand. 

“Oh my god,” Phil gasps. He launches himself into the air and starts circling low over the shore.

“Watch your mouth,” Techno growls, sword still poised for Dream’s throat. “You were supposed to be taking care of him, so that blood is on your hands.”

“Not taking care of him,  _ watching  _ him. My only responsibility was to make sure he didn’t cause more trouble for the rest of us. If he got into trouble himself, that’s on him,” Dream says coldly. 

“Don’t be so callous about my brother,” Techno barks. His grip on the sword goes white with rage. “That’s a sixteen year old boy you’re talking about!”

“Ooh, some brother you are, abandoning him all alone out here,” Dream laughs. “I was the only one there for him all this time, you should be thanking me!”

“If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t have been exiled at all!” Techno takes a step forward, but Dream doesn’t step back. The tip of Techno’s sword grazes the edge of Dream’s mask. 

“If it weren’t for me, he would’ve never learned his place,” Dream snarls. “Maybe it’s time you learned yours.” 

Faster than lightning, Dream pulls out an axe and swings it at Techno’s face. Techno ducks and lunges, thrusting his sword at one of the breaks in Dream’s netherite, by his knee. Dream sidesteps the blow, and Techno leaps back before the axe thunks into the dirt, right where Techno’s head used to be. 

“Such a pity he died now, I was almost done training him!” Dream cackles as Techno takes another swing. 

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Techno snaps. Dream whirls his axe down at Techno’s leg, forcing him to spin out of the way. 

“Oh, you know,” Dream shrugs. “Tough love and all that. Teaching him some fucking—manners.” Techno tries to interrupt him by swinging for his axe arm, but Dream moves just in time, and the sound of Techno’s sword hitting the axe handle reverberates across the clearing. 

Techno goes in for another strike, this time for Dream’s neck, when there’s a sudden sound of glass breaking, and Dream collapses to the ground. 

Behind him, Phil stands with his wings outstretched, looking  _ furious.  _

Dream groans and rolls over, and Techno takes the opportunity to pin him to the ground, stomping down  _ hard  _ on both his arms. There’s a crack, and Dream winces, but otherwise doesn’t react. Techno aims his sword at Dream’s throat, just close enough that it pierces the skin beneath his chin, and a small trickle of blood bubbles onto the dark metal.

Ghostbur bends down and picks up Dream’s discarded axe, dragging it away. 

“Splash potion of harming, potency II,” Phil says icily, holding the broken neck of a potion bottle over Dream’s face. “After one, you’re nearly dead, two and you’re nothing but a memory. That was one, and unless you want to meet your god before the hour’s up, I suggest you start talking.” Phil reaches into his robes and brandishes a swirling bottle of liquid that’s so dark violet it’s almost black. He holds it close enough to Dream’s mask that he can probably make out each individual toxic bubble. “What did you do to my son?”

“I already told you,” Dream growls. His voice is wheezy underneath his mask, and he clears his throat before continuing. “This wasn’t me. I don’t know what happened.”

“Maybe not,” Phil says, tossing the bottle in the air. He catches it with one hand, and Techno has the pleasure of feeling Dream flinch beneath his boots. “But you still did something. Don’t think I didn’t hear. What’s this about ‘training’ him?”

“Oh, you know how he is,” Dream scoffs. “I just told him what everyone was too nice to say to his face.”

“Which is…?” Phil raises an eyebrow and catches Dream with a flinty glare. 

Dream doesn’t answer.

Techno digs his heel into Dream’s arm and he flinches, hissing.

“Fine! Fuck, I just made sure he knew that he’s always been a good-for-nothing troublemaker and I kept him on a short leash so he didn’t get any ideas about starting another rebellion,” Dream replies through gritted teeth. “Now let me up and I’ll help you plan the funeral.”

Phil is deathly silent. 

Fury courses through Techno’s blood, lighting his nerves up like an exposed wire. It would be so easy to just push forward with his sword, spear Dream’s throat straight through, but he keeps still. He looks over at Phil, whose face is perfectly blank. 

“Not like you can do anything to save him now, you saw how much blood was in that shitty little tent,” Dream says roughly. 

Phil smashes the second bottle over Dream’s mask. 

Techno stares at the limp figure beneath him, and he feels nothing but mild disappointment. 

The great Dream, fallen to a harming potion, with barely more than a drop of blood shed by Techno’s sword. 

“Stand back, boys,” Phil says cooly, nudging Techno’s chest so he takes his feet off Dream’s slackened arms. “Wouldn’t want to step on broken glass.”

“Is he dead?” Ghostbur floats over to Dream’s leg and pokes it. 

Dream doesn’t twitch. 

“Yes,” Phil says. 

Ghostbur gets quiet for a moment, but his face is determined rather than sad. 

Finally he looks up and gives Phil a quick nod. 

“Good,” Ghostbur sniffs. “He was not nice.”

Techno turns his gaze back to the gory tent and grits his teeth. What an understatement.

“Let’s keep looking for Tommy,” Phil nods at the two of them, tossing the shattered remains of the second potion onto Dream’s body and dusting his hands off. Ghostbur floats over to the bloody path to the beach and stares off into the ocean.

“Do you think he’s down there?” Ghostbur asks quietly. Techno sheaths his sword and follows Phil over to Ghostbur’s side. 

“Surely not,” Phil murmurs. 

Techno bends down and inspects the drag marks. They’re strangely uniform, as though Tommy was dragged away on a sled of some sort, or something raked the path down after to obscure any detail. It’s also wider than Tommy was— _ is.  _ Tommy  _ is  _ rather narrow-framed, he wouldn’t have left such broad marks behind him. 

“Phil?” Techno calls, not taking his eyes off the marks. He beckons Phil over with one hand, with the other he bends down and pinches some of the bloodstained sand near the wide edges of the marks. 

“What is it?” Phil peers down at the sand and picks up a little of his own, studying it for whatever Techno might’ve seen. 

“Don’t these marks look a little strange to you?” Techno points at the edge, where some streaks of blood remain undisturbed. 

“They are pretty flat,” Phil muses. “His heels should’ve dug up two parallel valleys behind him, if he was being dragged.”

“And they weren’t swept, look at the blood.” Techno points at a circular splash just a couple paces back, collecting the sand together in weak little clumps. “There’s some pretty uniform splatters on both sides, all the way down the path. These are undisturbed, but they’re too broad to be Tommy-shaped.”

Phil makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. Then, careful not to disturb the marks in the sand, he marches up the hill to the tent opening. Techno follows close behind, ignoring the way his throat tightens at the sight of the gooey red, quickly drying in the sun. 

“Look at this,” Phil pats Techno’s shoulder and points down to the origins of the marks, where one thick streak of blood trails out from the puddle in the tent and slowly fades out, like a stroke from a mostly dry paintbrush. “It’s still just as wide here, and just as flat.”

“If this were from Tommy, he’d need to be… I don’t know, dragged by the feet with his arms spread all the way out and flat against the ground,” Techno mutters. “Which is improbable, at best.”

“More like ridiculous, I’d say,” Ghostbur shudders. “Maybe… Maybe all this isn’t his?”

“What, did he like to kill his animals inside his tent?” Techno snorts. It’s stupid, but he’s not willing to rule it out. Tommy’s always been a little weird, and that would explain the size of the drag marks. Although, why would he drag a dead animal all the way out to the ocean?

“No,” Ghostbur shakes his head. “Dream didn’t let him have any animals nearby, anyways.”

“What? Why?” Phil yelps. 

“I dunno,” Ghostbur shrugs. “Dream liked to bring him food sometimes, it would always make Tommy less grouchy.”

Techno sees red. 

“Was Dream his only source of food?” Techno asks quietly. 

“Yes,” Ghostbur replies. “He had to ration it really carefully, since Dream never remembered to bring enough. Now, if he eats too much, he gets sick.”

“I think Dream remembered just fine,” Phil snaps at no one in particular, his gaze locked onto Dream’s corpse just a few paces away. Then he takes a deep breath through his nose and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Short leash…”

“I think I’ve got a forensics book somewhere in the library back home,” Techno says carefully, so as to not worry Phil or Ghostbur with how much rage is erupting in his chest. “It might have some helpful information about these blood splatters.”

Phil closes his hands into fists, still pressed against his eyes. 

He takes another deep breath, then nods. “Alright. We’re gonna figure this out.” 

They turn back for the portal, but Ghostbur lingers behind, gazing at the pool of blood and wringing his hands. 

“I’m sorry,” Ghostbur blurts. Techno turns around and sees Ghostbur floating over the gore, curled up in a ball. His hair hangs low over his face. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t gotten lost or—or forgotten, then he wouldn’t—Tommy—”

“Oh, Ghostbur,” Phil is quick to gather his spectral son up in his arms, pulling him away from the scene inside the tent and cradling him close to his chest. “It’s not your fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I should’ve checked in on him sooner. It shouldn't be up to you to care for him like you have been. You did the best you could.”

“No! You didn’t know,” Ghostbur sobs, and he curls himself up tighter in Phil’s arms. “I saw what Dream was doing, but Tommy always insisted that Dream was his only friend, so I thought—I thought maybe they were just playing, but then Tommy started to get sadder and paler and I should’ve come to get you sooner—not just when he was right on the verge of death. And now he’s gone and I didn’t do  _ anything,  _ I’m just a useless ghost with a broken brain and—”

“Shh,” Phil interrupts. “That’s not true. It’s just as you said, you didn’t know any better. I’m sure Dream was an excellent actor in front of you, I’m sure he made it all look just like a game because he’s a terrible, disgusting man, and you’re not responsible for any of the results of his actions, alright?”

Ghostbur turns his face into Phil’s shoulder and sobs the way one does when the world has shattered and there’s no pieces left to start putting it back together. 

Techno steps forward. He holds his hands out to do something. He needs to do something, but he doesn’t know what’s to be done.

Phil continues to rock Ghostbur in his arms, clinging tight like he’ll turn to water and slip through his hands if he doesn’t hold them both together. Techno steps close and clasps one hand over Phils shoulder, resting the other against Ghostbur’s head. 

“He’s safe,” Techno insists. “He’s safe, because we’re going to save him.”

A little helplessly, Phil looks up and meets Techno’s gaze. His mouth presses into a firm line, and he blinks back the mistiness in his eyes. 

Ghostbur’s cries quieten, and he slowly unfurls himself from Phil’s arms. His feet touch the ground, but he doesn’t look up. His hair still shrouds his face like a curtain. 

“Right,” Ghostbur whispers. “Okay.” He floats in a wobbly line towards the portal, and Phil moves to follow after him, but Techno grabs his arm and pulls him back. 

“He’s safe,” Techno reiterates. He looks hard into Phil’s eyes, which are creased with worry. “Don’t beat yourself up with the blame game. He’s safe.”

“Of course,” Phil says with a weak smile. He looks away, and Techno shakes his arm to bring his attention back.

“I’m serious,” Techno says. “We all feel equal measures of guilt over this, so let’s mutually agree that none of us are more responsible than the other and just focus on finding him.”

“What could you be guilty for?” Phil huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s me who thought letting Ghostbur watch him was good enough, and who never bothered to check on him even when I  _ knew _ something was wrong, and as his father I’m the most responsible—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Techno growls. “If I told you why I feel like I’m to blame, you’d just tell me the same thing I’m telling you now—which is that it’s stupid. No amount of what-ifs or should-haves are gonna change the past, alright? All we can do to fix this is take it one step at a time.”

Phil doesn’t say anything for a long while, and Techno pales a bit, wondering if that was too harsh. He’s never been good at all this emotional stuff, especially not when it comes to comforting other people. 

But then Phil smiles, more confidently this time, and reaches up to straighten Techno’s crown. 

“When did you get so grown up?” Phil murmurs, and if his voice breaks a little, Techno doesn’t comment. “You’re right,” he sighs. “Let’s go find our boy.”

Techno lets Phil take the lead as they follow Ghostbur back to the portal, and when Techno passes Dream’s corpse, his fingers curl over the handle of his sword. 

“Burn in hell,” he snarls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Philza Minecraft said "I have some great news! See, there’s no need to wonder where your god is, because he’s right here! (And he’s fresh out of mercy)"
> 
> Also part of me wanted Dream to get away but I just couldn't stand to let the fucker live any longer so sorry if it's anticlimactic or something lol. Also remember that manhunt where he just got absolutely OWNED by a couple harming potions? IT'S CANON THAT PHIL IS GOOD WITH POTIONS SO IT MADE SENSE alright I'll stop yelling now lmao...


	17. Chapter 17

_This is hell,_ Tommy thinks, blinking black spots from his vision for the thousandth time that day. 

He’s starving, practically dead on his feet from the malnutrition of the past few days—the past few weeks haven’t been great either, if he’s honest. 

Every time he moves his arms a bit too far one way, or shrugs a little too fiercely, his wings pull against the stitches and light his whole body up with so much pain it takes his breath away. 

Maybe it’s a good thing he hasn’t eaten anything in a few days, otherwise surely he would’ve found himself choking to death on his own vomit after his last time waking up unconscious in the snow. 

He’s been walking for a long time, long enough that the sun is hanging high in the sky, and the terrain has changed from plains to forest to snow. The frozen biome was a welcome respite from the stagnant midday air that crept into his heavy coat and clung to his sweaty forehead, but now he worries if there are any villages that would set up shop somewhere as perpetually cold as this mountain tundra. 

He’s been scanning his surroundings for any sign of life ever since he first departed Logstedshire, collecting more sturdy sticks in hopes that if he stumbles across a village, he could trade them for food. That’s his top priority right now, so his broken body can start healing his ripped up back on its own, but something to speed up the process would be ideal. If there’s a cleric, or a trade for golden apples, he’ll probably break down into relieved sobs. 

Fuck, what he wouldn’t do for a golden apple right about now. 

The next most pressing issue will be medical supplies. He’s already switched out his bandages once, and there’d been a disconcerting amount of dried blood spotting the insides. His stitching job wasn’t exactly picture-perfect, and all the movement from his wings isn’t doing him any favors. 

Maybe, in the past, avians were supposed to go on bedrest until their sprouting wounds fully healed. They probably had special cots that held their wings up and out of the way of their stitches, and their families were always there to feed them, or switch out their bandages, or tell them stories about their adventures flying around the world. 

That would be nice, wouldn’t it? 

Instead, Tommy is starving, bitterly alone, and trudging through the tundra with barely more than dental floss holding him together.

Tommy sighs and leans against the trunk of a tree, itching at the bandages under his coat. He should probably change them again, what with all the sweating he’d done before getting to the tundra, but he’s running low on clean replacements. 

No time to rest now, not until he covers more ground or finds a village. If he lets himself relax for a minute, he might fall asleep and never wake up. 

Tommy hauls himself off the tree and staggers forward. 

One step at a time.

It’s sheer luck that he stumbles across a break in the trees wide enough to see more of the sky. In the distance, just a little to the east, a faint trail of smoke interrupts the otherwise unbroken blue. 

Smoke means fire, fire means people, and people means there’s probably a village nearby. 

Unable to quell the relieved grin that splits across his exhausted face, Tommy alters his path and heads for the rising smoke, praying to any deity that will listen that it’s not some random snowy getaway for Dream. 

That would be just Tommy’s luck, wouldn’t it? He goes through hell to escape, only to stagger right into that green bastard’s open arms hours later. 

Once he gets closer, he notices a few torches posted throughout the forest to keep mobs away. He doesn’t hear any of the usual rustle and bustle that usually surrounds a village, but perhaps it’s just because the snow muffles every sound into a suffocating silence. 

He follows the torches to a break through the trees, and finally sees the source of the smoke. It’s a single homey looking cottage, with multiple stories and a stable around the front that houses a single diamond-clad horse nibbling at a pile of hay. The horse doesn’t react when he approaches the house, and Tommy doesn’t bother to try and say hello. 

He limps up the stairs to the front door and steels himself, checking to make sure the tops of his wings are mostly hidden by Wilbur’s high collar. They definitely aren’t—the massive crimson tips tower nearly a foot over Tommy’s head, and his primaries drag almost to the floor, but it makes him feel a little better to check. 

Then, he raises a tentative hand and knocks. 

The hollow sound echoes like a drum in his ears, and he holds his breath. _Please don’t be Dream, please don’t be Dream._

The door doesn’t open. 

Tommy strains his ears for any sound at all, but he comes up empty. Not even a single muted footstep.

He knocks again, louder this time.

Nothing. 

Tommy frowns and shoves his hands into his pockets, weighing his options. He could wait on the front step until the owner returns, but that could take a while and he feels like walking death already. By the time someone shows up, he could be nothing but a bird-shaped popsicle. Besides, if it’s Dream’s house after all, Tommy will be dead once he shows up anyways. His best bet would be to break in and go from there, maybe take a few supplies that the owner won’t miss, and use that to tide him over until he finds an actual village. 

Decided, Tommy pushes open the door as slowly as he can. 

“Hello?” he calls quietly, his voice still raspy from when he’d screamed his lungs out last night. 

He gets no response, so he creeps inside. It’s silent, aside from the gentle crackling of netherrack in the fireplace. He closes the door quickly behind him, so as to not let the welcoming warmth escape. 

There’s a small living room beside an open kitchen, where a table and four stools are pressed tight into a corner. The fireplace is surrounded by cozy chairs colored with mismatched wool, and the wall around the fireplace is covered floor-to-ceiling in smooth wooden chests. There’s a little hole in the floor with a ladder that leads down to the basement and trails up to a second story over Tommy’s head. 

Tommy makes a beeline for the chests, nudging one open with his fingertips since his palms are still tender. Maybe he can find a pen and some paper, so he can write the owners a ‘sorry-but-also-thank-you’ note before he leaves and— 

Holy shit. 

The chest is filled near to bursting with sparkling golden apples. 

Tommy reaches in and grabs two, holding them up in the firelight just to be sure. 

Yeah, these are real, actual, beautiful golden apples. Every last one. What kind of paranoid psycho hoards this many gapples?

Not that Tommy’s complaining. The more they have, the less likely they are to notice a few missing. He sinks his teeth into the first one, and it tastes so good he could cry. 

He does cry, just a little. But no one is around to see it, which means it basically never happened. 

Tommy devours it down to the core in a matter of seconds, and the relief is instant. He feels like a new man, as the magical properties take root in his body and rejuvenate all his systems. He still feels hungry, but the weakness in his limbs and the fuzziness of his brain are temporarily swept away. 

He tosses the core into a trash can by the kitchen and starts in on the second one, using his free hand to look through the other chests. 

He finds three more filled just as tall with gapples, which both frightens and excites him in equal measure. Whatever insane life this person must lead to demand so many of the golden drops of heaven, Tommy does not envy them. 

One chest is just full of various stones, so he closes it and moves on to the one above it. If he has time, he might consider taking some of the workable stone and crafting himself some tools, but he can always do that at a village. He should probably spend as little time trespassing here as possible. 

The next chest, Tommy hits the jackpot. It’s filled corner to corner with glowing potions. 

He sorts through the tags with bated breath—could it be? Is his luck finally turning around? 

Finally his eyes land on one labeled _Regeneration II._ He pulls it out of the chest with a reverence he doesn’t recognize in himself and just stares at the glorious pink liquid for a moment. 

The moment vanishes almost immediately as Tommy uncorks the bottle and drains half the potion in one swig. 

It takes a second for the potion to kick in, but once it does, Tommy nearly pukes at the feeling of his skin sewing itself back together. His palms tingle and his back feels like spiders are crawling up and down the length of his wounds, but the relief from the pain is like a drug. He finishes the rest of the potion and pockets the empty bottle, turning back to the chests with renewed vigor. 

He can’t take another potion yet, not unless he wants to make himself sick and feverish while his body regenerates cells at impossible speeds. He’s still going to need a few weeks’ worth of healing before he’s good as new, even with the help from the potion. He intentionally avoided the instant health pots he’d found because he knows that they tend to overload the system, especially on old wounds. Regeneration is usually better for things like this, even if they do leave behind the scars. 

But his back has stopped screaming with every movement of his shoulders, and his palms feel right as rain, which is so much better than what he’d resigned himself to before. 

He’s so giddy from the high of his body recovering that he doesn’t hear the door open, nor does he notice the three shadows that appear behind him until one of them speaks. 

“Tommy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I JUST NOTICED WE HIT 1k KUDOS??? I'm actually so blown away thank you all so much. Also, with this chapter, the timelines have finally converged! So next chapter won't be another inconvenient flashback :D I hope that makes some of you feel a little better haha


	18. Chapter 18

“Tommy?”

There’s a heavy set of footsteps running up to him, and Tommy flinches, accidentally throwing himself into one of the chests, which jolts his shoulder hard enough that his vision goes white with pain. 

He makes a choked noise and staggers back, hands flying up to protect his face. 

_ Not again, not here, please— _

“Tommy!” Ghostbur’s echoey voice pierces through the cloud of pain, and he forces himself back into the present. He’s cowering in a corner, and there are three people, including Ghostbur, standing just out of arm’s reach. One has long pink hair, pulled into a bun at the base of his neck. Another has pale violet and grey wings, tucked close against his body. 

“Ghostbur?” Tommy manages, though his voice is strangled by his own panicked breaths. Ghostbur shoulders his way in front of the others, arms outstretched.

“Tommy! You’re alive!” Ghostbur cries, reaching out to hold Tommy’s face in his icy hands. “We were looking all over for you!”

Tommy slowly brings his arms down, blinking up at Ghostbur’s grey face. Then he glances over at the other two figures in the room and blanches. Phil and Techno are standing just behind Ghostbur, their faces a mixture of shock, concern, and disbelief. 

“You—you were looking for me?” Tommy stammers. 

“Yes! I’m so sorry it took so long for me to get Phil, I got lost in the snow,” Ghostbur explains. His face is tacky with dried blue tears. “When we got to Logstedshire, it was—you—”

“What happened to you?” Techno interrupts. His tone isn’t accusatory, but Tommy still shrinks back until his wings hit the chests behind him, and he recoils when his stitches whine in protest. 

“When we saw the inside of that tent we thought—just—are you alright?” Phil says in a rush. He has his hands out like he wants to reach out and pull Tommy in tight, but he retreats a bit when he sees Tommy startle. 

“I—yeah, I’m alive, at least,” Tommy replies, eyes flicking back and forth between Techno and Phil’s faces. “Is Dream here?”

Phil’s expression darkens. “No. And he’s not coming back.”

Warring emotions collide in Tommy’s heart. One half of himself screams to get out of here—these people never cared about him, and they never should have. He doesn’t deserve it, he needs Dream, Dream will keep him safe.

The other half wants to melt into a puddle on the floor and sob with relief. He’s free.

“Okay,” Tommy says at length. His heart threatens to beat straight through his chest. 

“Do… do you wanna sit down or something?” Techno says cautiously. He steps to the side and points to the living room chairs, situated lovingly around the fire. 

Of course. Tommy should’ve known that Techno is the only person alive who would collect gapples until all his chests are overflowing. Of course this is Techno’s house. 

“I can’t,” Tommy blurts. Yes, he would love to sit down, but unfortunately he’s got two new feathered appendages that will most definitely get in the way of that.

“What do you mean?” Phil asks gently. Tommy looks up at him, helpless. 

“I—uhh… Look, it’s—really hard to explain,” Tommy stammers. The tops of his wings are hidden by his head and the shadows behind him, so the others don’t appear to have noticed.

“Well… Are you okay?” Phil asks, rubbing his hands over each other in anxious little movements. 

Tommy just lets out a startled laugh. How is he supposed to respond? “That’s a loaded question.”

“Sounds ominous,” Techno snorts. Tommy levels him with a grim glare.

“You don’t know the half of it, Technoblade.”

At that, Techno goes a little rigid, and a wrinkle appears between his brows. 

“Guess not,” he says, strangely soft. 

Tommy raises a curious brow at him, and Ghostbur pulls Tommy’s focus back towards him. “Tnret was covered in blood, Tommy,” he whispers. “I thought I lost you.”

Ah, right. That.

“Oh, yeah. That was—that was me. Sorry.” Tommy looks down at the floor.

“We don’t want an apology, Tommy,” Phil stresses. “We just want to know what happened. I mean—how are you—how did you survive that?”

Tommy takes a deep breath. Now’s as good a time as any, he supposes. No chance he’s getting out of this undetected, so he might as well show them. 

“Let me preface this by saying that there’s a legitimate chance I am going crazy and hallucinating shit, so just keep that in mind,” Tommy mutters, standing up a little straighter. He gets to work on the buttons on his coat, suddenly grateful that he’d forgotten to tie his wings up with the non-adhesive bandage belt the last time he switched his dressings. Ghostbur steps back, so Tommy turns around and faces the wall just as the last button comes undone. 

He shrugs off Wilbur’s old coat and lets it drop to the floor, and his wings unfurl.

Someone—probably Phil—sucks in a sharp gasp. 

“Woah!” Ghostbur exclaims.

“Cool,” Techno murmurs. 

Tommy turns his head a little, flashing a signature triumphant grin. 

“Thanks, I sprouted them myself,” he laughs. Suddenly, the energy in the room goes somber. 

Tommy turns around, tucking his wings in with his hands because he’s not willing to test out their mobility against the stitches yet, regenerated or not. 

Phil has a hand over his mouth. His eyes are wide. 

“So…” Tommy shrugs awkwardly, and the feathers rustle a little behind him. “That’s what I was doing last night. Phil was right, shit hurts.”

“Is that where you got those dopey stitches from?” Techno deadpans.

“Hey!” Tommy snarls. “They are not  _ dopey,  _ I was doing the best I could with just the reflection of the water to help me, dickhead. No health pots in exile, I’m afraid. Just a good old fashioned needle and thread.”

Phil looks to be on the verge of tears. 

“Sorry,” Tommy deflates. “I can—uh, put them away, if they make you uncomfortable, or something.”

“No, not at all!” Phil whispers. He reaches a tentative hand out to cup Tommy’s face, and Tommy lets him. “I just—I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Alone.” His voice breaks and he squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t imagine.”

“You probably can,” Tommy says with a shaky shrug. “Better than anyone else, at least.”

“No, I really can’t,” Phil sighs. “When mine came in—I told you how my friends were there the whole time, right? They were healing my back as it happened, and I was given plenty of numbing to withstand it. It was painful, but once it was all done, the only side effects were a little bit of muscle tenderness.”

“Oh,” Tommy frowns. “Yeah, that—that wasn’t exactly my experience.”

“My little bird,” Phil says brokenly. He holds his arms out to embrace him, but Tommy staggers away. 

“Woah, watch the stitches,” he laughs nervously, and Phil goes ashen, stepping back as though burned. 

“Speaking of stitches,” Techno interjects. “Why don’t you lay down and let me and Phil fix whatever botched suture job you managed to pull together in the reflection of a dirty puddle.”

Tommy wants to argue, but he knows better than anyone that his stitching abilities were realms away from perfect at the time he put them in.

Techno moves the kitchen table out of the way to make room for a soft woolen bedroll, which he sets out on the floor far enough from the wall that Tommy’s wings won’t get all bunched up. Then he instructs Tommy to lay down on his stomach and pillow his head with his arms. 

Techno gets to work cutting away the old bandages while Ghostbur cards chilly fingers through Tommy’s hair. Tommy sighs and leans into the touch. 

When they finally get the bandages off, both Phil and Techno let out startled curses at the amalgamation of skin, blood, and medical thread poking out of Tommy’s back. 

“This is gonna leave a crazy scar,” Techno says under his breath, and Tommy buries his face into his arms to hide a laugh. 

“You’re telling me, man,” Tommy chuckles. “Had to put myself back together like a puzzle.”

He cranes his neck back to look up at their faces. Phil looks stricken, and mildly sick.

“We need to disinfect it,” Techno says roughly. There’s a sound of a bottle being tipped over some cloth. “Brace yourself.”

“Wait!” Tommy cries. Shit, he almost forgot. He reaches blindly for something to grab onto, and closes his hands around two legs of a kitchen stool. “Alright, go ahead.”

“What’re you gonna do, hit me with that?” Techno sounds unimpressed. 

“Of course not,” Tommy scoffs. “I’ve got the raptor stress grip,  _ pal.  _ I’m a birdman.”

“Oh,” Phil says, then bursts into nervous laughter. “Oh! That makes a lot of sense, actually.”

“Yeah, lots of things adding up all of a sudden?” Tommy snorts. “Been there.”

And for a moment, everything is back to normal again.

Then Techno says, “Ready?” and Tommy nods.

“Yeah, go ahead.” His hands tighten around the smooth wood. 

It isn’t pretty. 

Tommy can only grit his teeth and whimper at the sudden cold stinging as Phil and Techno run the soaked cloths over his wounds. Ghostbur keeps a comforting hand in Tommy’s hair, and he focuses on the icy sensation to distract him from the burning. 

Tommy clings to the legs of the stool hard enough to splinter them, and the tender flesh of his palms ache. He didn’t have the chance to check on them after drinking the regeneration potion, so he hopes the scrapes were small enough that they already scarred over. 

It’s barely a sneeze compared to when his wings had first sprouted, which is a relief. 

Tommy wonders if he’ll ever experience pain the same again after that. 

After what feels like hours, Techno and Phil pull the cloths away, and Tommy sags down bonelessly against the bedroll. Ghostbur is murmuring something under his breath, but Tommy can’t make out the words. He doesn’t bother with trying. 

“Alright, Tommy, you did a pretty good job with the stitches at the bottom and top of your back, but it gets a bit spottier near the middle, where you probably couldn’t reach as well,” Phil explains, and Tommy tries to pull his head out from underwater so he can focus on the words. “Techno and I are just gonna add a few more, then we’ll put some healing salve over your back and bandage you up, okay?”

“Right,” Tommy grunts. His knuckles are white.

“Barely made a sound,” Techno murmurs, so low under his breath that Tommy wonders if he caught the words correctly. 

“I know,” Phil whispers.

It’s a slow process, stitching the gaps in Tommy’s clumsy handiwork, but Tommy finds that if he focuses on his grip around the stool, or Ghostbur’s low humming, it isn’t so bad. 

It’s actually nice, not needing to worry about ripping out his own progress every time he reaches back to do more. 

By the time they’re finished and rubbing the salve over Tommy’s wounds, he only feels exhausted, his eyelids drooping down between each breath. He realizes he hasn’t slept in two days, and he feels wrung dry.

“Tommy?” Phil is stroking his cheek with his thumb. Tommy tears his eyes open and looks up at Phil’s gentle, smiling face. 

“All done now, you can get up.”

Tommy groans and pulls himself up by his elbows. Surprisingly, his hands maintained their stress grip around the stool legs, even as he started to drift off to sleep. He scowls and takes a few calming breaths, and his fingers come undone. 

“Do you feel any soreness in your muscles? I know your wings must’ve done a number on them, especially with the bruising around your ribs, so don’t be shy if something starts to ache,” Phil soothes. Tommy manages to pull himself up to sitting, and he rubs the tiredness out of his eyes. 

“No, the bruises are from Dream,” he explains sleepily. “My muscles feel fine—well, they’re alright—I dunno, I had to go mining for new gear every day.” Tommy frowns. “Dickhead kept exploding all my shit whenever he came ‘round.”

Techno is whispering something angrily in the background, but Tommy is too worn out to pay attention. Phil helps Tommy to his feet and maneuvers him over to a bed by the couch. One of them must’ve set it up while Tommy was getting stitched up. 

Tommy drops onto it like a stone, and Phil pulls the sheets up to his mid-back, just below where his wings attach to his back. 

“Get some sleep,” Phil whispers. He presses a kiss onto Tommy’s head, and Tommy sighs, burying himself further into the cozy softness of the bed. It’s been far too long since he last felt warm. He doesn't deserve to feel this warm.

As Tommy falls asleep, he tries not to feel like his heart is breaking.


	19. Chapter 19

Techno wants to break something. He wants to  _ kill  _ something. But Dream is already dead, and he can’t torture a corpse. 

“We should’ve bled that fucker dry before we let him die,” Techno growls once Phil finally comes down the ladder, holding his wings close to his body so they don’t get caught on the lip of the opening. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?”

“Yeah, I did,” Phil puts his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I left Tommy alone with him.”

“Dream hurt him, he hurt  _ Tommy,  _ who the hell does he think he is?” Techno hisses. He’s pointing at the wall, as though it will give him an answer. “He hurt  _ Tommy _ !”

“I know!” Phil cries. He runs his hands up into his hair and grabs on tight. “I know, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now.”

“Did you see his black eye? That was probably Dream too,” Techno snarls. He’s not listening to Phil, he can’t listen to anything but the furious rush of blood in his ears. He feels like he’s going to explode. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna bring him back to life just so I can kill him again.”

“That won’t solve anything,” Phil says bitterly. “Techno, breathe. In and out, follow my lead—”

“It’ll solve the fact that I want to kill him,” Techno curls his hands into fists, so tight they vibrate at his side. He imagines Dream, hurling kicks and venom at his little brother, starving him until Techno can count every last one of his ribs, forcing him to stagger through the dark and break apart stone after stone just to collect iron that will be blown to bits the next morning, and Techno  _ burns.  _ How dare he?  _ How dare he _ ?

“Techno, Techno,” Phil takes his hands. They’re shaking, but Phil rubs soothing circles over his knuckles and forces Techno to look up. “Deep breaths, just like that. In, out,” Phil instructs.

Techno does as he’s told. He doesn’t want to, he wants—no,  _ needs _ —to be angry, but it’s upsetting Phil, so he pushes the feelings back. He breathes in through his nose, then out through his mouth, and Phil mirrors his breaths until Techno stops shaking. 

“Good,” Phil says with a weary smile. Techno stares at him, unblinking. “It’s alright, he’s safe now.”

Techno breaks apart. 

He tilts his head into Phil’s shoulder, and for the first time in over a decade, Technoblade cries. 

His face crumples up, and he can’t breathe. Tears are coming out of him. He’s crying.

He reaches around Phils back and claws at the fabric of his shirt, balling it tight in his fists. He clings as though Phil holds the strings that keep him tied to reality, and if he lets go, he will fall straight through the ground and die. 

Phil rubs comforting circles on Techno’s back, and Techno just cries. 

Tommy stirs under Ghostbur’s hand, so he pauses, waiting for Tommy to relax again. 

Tommy wrinkles his nose and turns his face to the other side of the pillow, then goes still.

Ghostbur lets out a breath, then goes back to the brilliantly colored wing stretched over his lap. There are some things from his childhood that he never forgot, and one of those things was preening. There were never any sad feelings when he and his brothers sat down to gently help set Phil’s feathers back into place. The motions are almost automatic, and Ghostbur takes his time, straightening out each individual blade of vermillion and honey, admiring how they shimmer in the torchlight. 

Tommy was trembling in his sleep when Ghostbur went up to check on him earlier in the night, and his breathing was ragged. Ghostbur wanted to help, but he didn’t know how, so he just sat down on the edge of the bed and started smoothing down some of the misaligned feathers. They’d been crumpled by his coat when Tommy first arrived, and Ghostbur didn’t imagine it was very comfortable. 

The moment he started combing through Tommy’s feathers, the trembling stopped. After a few minutes, his breathing slowed, and his muscles relaxed. 

Tommy has been tense, ever since they found him rifling through the chests in Technoblade’s house. When he’d first shown them his wings, his shoulders were drawn tight up to his ears. While Techno and Phil stitched up those snaggy lines on his back, Tommy gripped so tight onto the stool legs he left fingerprints behind in the wood. 

Now, in sleep, he’s gone slack. 

Wilbur moves further along the wing, and as he does, he takes another look at Tommy’s bare torso. His bones stick out in every which way, his shoulder blades are flat triangular planes framing the bumpy line of his spine. His elbows jut out, pointy and wider than his thin upper arms. His wrists are smooth down to the round bit that pokes beneath his palm, on the same side as his pinky. Ghostbur can see all the sinews through the backs of his hands, four lines stretching up to knobby knuckles.

Techno said Dream was starving him.

Ghostbur will never forgive himself for not seeing it. 

Tommy always seemed so full of life whenever Dream visited, whether it was from anger or laughter, he was always loud and proud. When Dream left, he would go quiet and cold. Ghostbur thought it was because they were friends. 

He never thought it was because Tommy was fighting for his life. 

Tommy was always such a happy kid, he’d ramble along about whatever came to mind until it brought a smile to everyone’s faces. He’d follow along with all of their dumb games, even when the game was all about teasing him. Tommy would dish it back just as easily, and playfully annoy them until he gained the upper hand. He was brilliant and bright. 

What happened to him?

He was different, even before his wings sprouted and made getting stitches look like a walk in the park. He always said he missed home, but Ghostbur didn’t understand. Home was never far away, and he found it eventually, following the same path Ghostbur did whenever he got lost. 

Tommy made it home.

But he doesn’t seem happy. Not yet. 

He flinches whenever someone gets too close.

He trembles in his sleep.

His eyes dart around the room at all times, skittish and on edge.

Dream was doing something to him, and it’s not something Ghostbur wants to understand. Sometimes, when he tries to remember some of the things Dream said, he hears his own voice echoing back. It’s cold, and not the way that Ghostbur gets cold from the snow. 

It’s the voice of Wilbur, who was crazy. 

Did he do this? 

Was Wilbur paving the way for Dream to do this?

Maybe Wilbur didn’t deal the final blow, but he definitely wore Tommy down to a paper-thin skeleton of his former self. Then, all Dream had to do was pick a place to aim, and shove. 

_ Isolation _ , a voice hisses.  _ He was isolated with someone he was forced to trust _ , _ even when they hurt him _ .  _ You were all he had _ .

Dream followed that same strategy.

Ghostbur doesn’t know what to do. 

He’s afraid to think too much about it, because if he starts, he won’t be able to stop. 

Memories are creeping up on him—bad memories. 

Maybe they can tell him how to help Tommy.

Maybe they’ll only hurt him more. 

Ghostbur sighs and sets down Tommy’s wing, gently folding it by the side of the bed so it doesn’t pull on his stitches. Then he floats to the other side and gets to work carding through the new set of rumpled feathers. 

Tommy will be okay, he has to. He’s only sixteen, and he’s already seen enough blood and pain and fear to last a lifetime. He will be okay, and he will live out the rest of his days happy and free of sorrow. He deserves nothing less. 

Tommy makes a heartbreaking little sniffling sound, and Ghostbur’s chest feels like it’s going to burst. He clutches at his shirt and gasps, as though the feeling is a physical blow. 

“It’s alright,” Ghostbur promises, petting Tommy’s hair. “I’m here.”


	20. Chapter 20

The next morning, Tommy looks like he’s not all here. His eyes are distant as he fidgets with his hands, and his mouth is pulled into a confused frown.

Phil passes him a cup of tea and a bowl full of porridge.

Tommy is sat at the table, his wings hanging limp behind him, and Phil’s shoulders ache for him. Once those stitches heal, he’s gonna need to remember how he taught himself to live with them, and give Tommy all the tips and tricks. 

How strange. He finally has something to teach to his children that he’s known almost all his life, and it makes him want to cry. 

“I can’t eat this,” Tommy mumbles, pushing the bowl away with his fingertips. Phil makes a mental note to ask about those bandaged up palms. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, you’ve done nothing wrong,” Phil says lightly, but Tommy’s shoulders bunch up to his ears anyways. “Why? Would you like me to make you something else?”

“No, this is—great—but I can’t eat much of anything right now.” Tommy folds his bony hands on the table and averts his gaze. “I’ll throw up.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to try?” Phil prompts, gently as he can, but there’s a concerned furrow in his brow so deep it pulls his whole face down. “Porridge is really gentle on the stomach, it’ll be a good starter food to get you back into shape.”

Tommy stares at the bowl. Steam curls up from the center, warm and innocent, sugared perfectly to Tommy’s tastes. It smells like safety and kindness and nausea. 

Phil is giving him a pleading look, and it makes Tommy want to shrink away and hide. Instead, he pulls the bowl a little closer to himself and takes a bite. 

He needs to go slowly. He can’t eat like he wants to—devouring it whole, rampaging through the entire serving until he’s full to bursting and the stitches holding him together snap against the pressure, and all the stickiness inside him spills out and stains the wooden floors.

The bites crawl down his throat.

He finishes half the bowl and closes his eyes. The spoon clatters against the glass, and the leftover porridge cradles it tight. Techno emerges from the library, the rungs of the ladder squeaking with each step. 

“Have some tea,” Phil nudges the warm mug into Tommy’s wintery hands. “I added some regen, it’ll help you heal.”

“I don’t deserve this,” Tommy whispers. His voice is carried away by the sound of Techno brewing his own tea, pouring hot water into a mug, dropping the little bag of dried leaves in to bleed away their colors. 

“What was that?” Phil hums. Tommy wants to drop it, wants to shove the truth aside, but he’s spent too long paying for his crimes beneath Dream’s heel to let himself start it all over again. He needs to repent. 

“I don’t deserve this,” Tommy says louder. He needs to be strong. This ends now. “You’re too good to me.”

“Don’t say that,” Phil chides with a laugh, but it’s strained. “Of course you deserve it.”

Tommy doesn’t respond. 

“Tommy, I’m serious,” Phil goes around to Tommy’s side of the table and places a hand in Tommy’s hair. “Why do you think that?”

“You—you don’t need to put up with me anymore,” Tommy blurts. “I’m just walking trouble. I know that now. I don’t deserve this.” He scrubs at his eyes with his unbandaged fingertips. His chin droops down to his chest. The facade is breaking down, he can feel it in the palpable silence that stretches over the room, thinner than the soft blades of his feathers.

“Dream tell you that?” Techno asks. His voice is cold, and Tommy wants to disappear. He wants to die, right here. He wants to vanish and never bother them again. 

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Tommy huffs. “All I’ve ever done is cause you guys trouble. You were right, Tech. I shouldn’t get a happy ending.”

Three voices speak at once, but Techno’s rises above the clamor. 

“Tommy, I was just being an overdramatic jackass—”

“As usual,” Ghostbur adds sagely. Techno scowls but doesn’t respond to the jab.

“Yeah, I was upset, but you’re here now, so there’ll be plenty of time to talk about it later, once you get better. You’re not ‘causing trouble’ just by existing, Tommy.” Techno scoffs, as though it’s supposed to be obvious, but a sound gets caught in Tommy’s throat and bubbles into an incredulous laugh. 

“That’s so funny,” Tommy giggles, because he doesn’t think he can do anything else. “Dream said literally the exact opposite.” He puts his head into his hands, and his hands down onto the table so he’s almost folded in half. His next words are nearly silent. “I was supposed to just kill myself.”

Not silent enough, apparently, because suddenly there’s hands in his hair and panicky voices shouting over his head and it’s just too much. They’re asking him what he just said, but they know, they heard him. They’re really asking why he said it in the first place. They don’t understand.

It’s just too much. 

“No!” Tommy insists, pulling himself up. His spoon gets jolted in the chaos, and it tumbles to the floor. “No, you’re not listening to me! I am _poison_ , I’m a parasite! Who cares if it was Dream who told me that, I would’ve figured it out on my own, eventually—after everyone pushed me away, I would’ve realized why—I would’ve known! I don’t get to go back to normal after this, I don’t get to ‘recover,’ or—or get better, or whatever you’re saying. I didn’t even mean to come here after I ran, I only left because Dream was going to cut off my wings and I wasn’t—thinking straight—I wasn’t thinking at all, really. Maybe I deserve to get them chopped off, I don’t know, this part is new to me—but the other stuff isn’t! I don’t deserve to be here, and I don’t deserve your kindness, and I should just get out of your hair and run away or kill myself before I infect everything again like I always did before!” He gasps, and chokes back a sob. “Like before!”

He staggers off the kitchen stool, hiccuping, and sticks his hands into his hair. His stupid clumsy wings get in the way of his feet, and he collapses to the ground. 

A hand settles awkwardly on his bicep, a careful distance from the bandages on his shoulder. It’s calloused and scarred, and Tommy doesn’t need to look up to know it belongs to Techno. Why is he here? Why is he being _comforting_? Tommy just told them the truth, and they’re comforting him, as though he’s the victim of something, rather than the other way around. 

His back is cold—too cold—and there are chilly fingers combing through his feathers. Ghostbur.

“Tommy—Tommy, listen to me,” Phil appears by his side, framing Techno, and the light around them goes dim when Phil’s wings stretch over the four of them, blocking them out from the rest of the world. “I know you might not believe me when I say this—not right away—but the things you’re feeling right now—the guilt, the self-hatred, the fear—that’s all a product of Dream’s manipulation. He was lying to you.”

_It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true._

“It is true,” Phil’s voice breaks. Tommy didn’t realize he said that out loud. “I know you must feel it, somewhere deep down and hidden so Dream couldn’t see. You know that he was hurting you. You know that even if he was nice sometimes, he could be twice as vicious, and it confused you, didn’t it? It was easier to just believe him, and go along with whatever he said, because then you’d have less to fear. He wanted you to feel that way, because then he could control you. People try to control what they don’t understand, because what they don’t understand frightens them. You frightened him, and you had power over him, so he did everything he could to take that away.”

“But he was the only one that was there,” Tommy sniffs. Techno’s hand stutters against Tommy’s arm. “What else was I supposed to believe, when he told me that he was the only one who cared enough not to lie to me, because he was also the only one that cared enough to stick around?”

“That’s my fault,” Phil says fiercely. “Not yours. I could give you a million excuses for why I never came to visit you, but none of them could ever— _ever_ make up for what it’s done to you. Tommy, I’m so sorry. You’re my— _you’re my son_ . I should’ve been there, but I wasn’t, and now you think you’re some awful little thing when instead you should be _soaring_.”

Tommy thinks Phil is crying, but he can’t be sure. He doesn’t want to look up from his hands, folded between his drawn up knees. He’s just so confused, and everything hurts. 

“Dream can’t hurt you anymore,” Ghostbur murmurs. His hands are absently working through Tommy’s feathers, and every brush of his chilly fingers makes the tension in Tommy’s shoulders unwind more and more. “He’s gone now, and he won’t take away your wings. We’ll keep you safe.”

Tommy’s breath shudders in his chest. “Really?” 

“Really,” Techno says. “Phil grounded his ass straight to hell.”

Inexplicably, Tommy begins to laugh. He shouldn’t—Dream was his friend—but the flood of emotions feels like relief. 

He really shouldn’t be so relieved to hear that. 

But Tommy is swept away by memories—the ones where Dream taunted and mocked him, and gave him food just to watch Tommy scramble for it. He sees himself, screaming out for help in the cold confines of the mine, only to be dragged out by the collar and thrown to the ground, punished for daring to question why Dream would hurt him. He sees fists and blood and bruises, threats veiled by praise, kindness dangled before him as a way to demand compliance. He remembers isolation and fear, contrasted by his first days in exile when all he’d wanted was for Dream to leave him alone. 

Maybe Phil has a point. 

“Oh,” is all he can say. 

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Techno laughs, but it’s not at Tommy’s expense. “You don’t have to believe us now, but I hope you can at least trust that we’re not going to hurt you. That’s gotta be a step up from before.”

Tommy wipes his eyes. He’s still crying, but he doesn’t feel like he’s going to drown in it anymore. “It is,” he sniffles. 

“Then let’s settle for that. Let yourself relax, and let us take care of you. You can doubt and wonder and do whatever you want after.” Techno’s hand pulls away from Tommy’s arm but it returns a second later, pressing something cool and round over Tommy’s head. “We’ll keep you safe.” He echoes Ghostbur’s words, and Tommy looks up. He recognizes the comforting weight of Techno’s crown over his head. 

Techno only lets other people wear it when they’re having an exceptionally terrible day. 

Tommy must’ve really scared him. 

A warm mug is being pressed into Tommy’s hands. 

Tommy looks up, and Phil is smiling at him. His eyes are watery but his grin is sincere. 

“Drink up,” Phil prompts. It’s not an order, or a strict command. It’s a hand, reaching out to help Tommy up when he stumbled in the dirt by their old house. It’s a fatherly touch, pressing bandages over Tommy’s scraped knees. 

It’s home. 

“Would you like some blue?” Ghostbur asks quietly over Tommy’s shoulder. 

Tommy brings the mug up to his lips and shakes his head. 

“I don’t need any right now,” he says gently. “Maybe later, but not now.”

It’s not a lie. 

Tommy knows he isn’t better. He’s not going to magically start trusting other people overnight, and he’s still going to have nightmares. He’s still going to look at his reflection with disgust, and he won’t be able to go into the nether without wanting to sink into the lava’s warm embrace. He will have to reconcile his tentative alliance with Techno, and he will still look at Ghostbur sometimes and ache for what he’s lost. He will start conversations with Phil and suddenly lose his ability to speak, crumbling beneath a mountain of messy emotions. 

But he can deal with that later. 

Right now, he’s going to drink the warm tea in his hands and let the magic sew his skin back together. Then he will take the hands Techno and Phil extend in his direction, and they’ll pull him to his feet. Then he will put the empty mug in the sink and try to rinse it out himself, but he’ll accidentally whack Techno in the face with his wings. Then Phil will laugh and help him learn how to control them, going slow so he doesn’t hurt himself. 

Someday, he will learn how to fly. 

For now, he just needs to take life as he’s always done. 

One step at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.... This is it!!! Thank you all for joining me on this ride!! I honestly wasn't expecting so many of you to like it as much as you said in the comments, I'm completely blown away! Thank you endlessly to everyone that said such nice things :) I'll still be keeping up with this fic even though it's finished and I'll try to reply to every comment I can! 
> 
> Also--this story isn't over!! The plot for this particular work has tied up with this final chapter, but there will be more for our little bird. There are some deleted flashback scenes and extra fluff that I want to share with you guys, like little snippets of Tommy's wings healing, him learning how to fly, having much-needed conversations with his family, etc. But the plot I set out to write in this work is finished. If you want to keep up with me and the other works I may be posting soon(ish) feel free to subscribe to me on my author page!! 
> 
> Thanks again! I hope you guys like it :) ♡
> 
> EDIT:: WAAAAAAHH CRIES SOBS SCREAMS WAILS GUYS!!!! Some people on twitter (now instagram as well!!) drew some absolutely GORGEOUS fanart for this fic im literally in tears,,,,,, PLEASE go check them out and if you know of any others i would love to see them and link them here :,) but like hoooolllyy shit im shaking and crying with joy rn i can't believe it y'all are so talented ToT
> 
> https://twitter.com/ArekSucks/status/1359536494621454339  
> https://twitter.com/ArekSucks/status/1360259773355196416  
> https://twitter.com/Doppio_stellato/status/1359895027326087171  
> https://twitter.com/ArekDoesNotSuck/status/1359245449924931587 (this one made me cry. violently.)  
> https://twitter.com/Doppio_stellato/status/1359948361101639680  
> https://twitter.com/ethmaron/status/1360052753452646402  
> https://www.instagram.com/p/CLNiUNChlFt/?igshid=1w7ioylco7cda  
> https://twitter.com/yuriko_240/status/1361635235067097091  
> https://twitter.com/miat_artistry/status/1361517528921554944  
> https://twitter.com/Pastel_Sprout/status/1361444031637544960
> 
> PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU KNOW OF ANYONE WHO HAS DRAWN MORE BECAUSE I WILL CRY SO HARD /pos


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